USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 12
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1885, 2 vols.), II, 269-270; E. Clowes Chor- ley, Men and Movements of the Episcopal Church (New York, 1948), 209 ff .; JGC, 1844, pp. 230-250; JM, 1843, pp. 32-33.
26. JM, 1843, p. 32.
27. JM, 1843, p. 33.
28. Ibid.
29. Richard Upjohn, the architect of Trinity in New York, also drew the plans for the present Church of the Ascension, about 1840. Fearing 'the winning ways of Richard Upjohn ... and strongly con- vinced of the virtues of Low Church prin- ciples, the rector [Manton Eastburn ] him- self purchased the land immediately be- hind the church in order to foil any at- tempt to introduce a deep chancel like that at Trinity'. Everard M. Upjohn, Rich- ard Upjohn, Architect and Churchman (New York, 1939), p. 69.
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a pseudo-Gothic architecture externally, and a nearly rectangular or meetinghouse design for the interior. With his urban back- ground, Eastburn favored stone or brick materials. The latter ma- terials of course, were far more durable. Upjohn's interpretation of Gothic found no expression in Boston, even though he drew the plans for St. John's Episcopal Church at Bangor, Maine. While Upjohn had his office in Boston, he had become a friend of Trini- ty's rector, the Rev. Jonathan M. Wainwright. Upjohn did minor and relatively insignificant work commissioned by Wainwright for a pulpit, but not until the latter had been elected provisional bish- op of New York did Upjohn get the call for drawings for a new Trinity. Then he left Boston permanently in 1839. Eastburn gave his own touch to the plan for the Church of the Ascension in New York, which Upjohn otherwise would have drawn along the accent- ed sanctuary design of its sister church, Trinity.30 The subject of church architecture has always been more of a theological and doctrinal problem than a problem in aesthetics or in engineering. Also, it has been a strictly parochial problem.
Bishop Eastburn's final point took up church music. Trinity's choir, along with several other church choirs, was known as out- standing at least in music circles.31 The organist at Trinity when Eastburn became rector was A. U. Hayter. At Eastburn's sugges- tion Hayter compiled a little book of appropriate psalm and hymn tunes, and of chants'.32 To turn the sung Te Deum, for example, away from a concert form toward a simpler rendering in chanting, was Bishop Eastburn's purpose. 33 In music the bishop found that
30. Upjohn, Upjohn, pp. 35, 43, 47.
31. H. Earle Johnson, Musical Interludes in Boston, 1795-1830 (New York, 1943), pp. 18-19.
32. Grove, Dictionary of Music and Mu- sicians, VI, 18. JM, 1832, p. 35.
33. The music of the Episcopal Church, says one authority, 'has usually followed English practice, at the natural interval of some years'. Lowell Mason, who spent many years in Boston, though 'not a churchman', influenced the Rev. George T. Rider, of Canandaigua, N. Y., who in
turn compiled, in 1854, 'the first manual making "full provision for the music of our Liturgy, in a form that congregations can easily use." ' Trinity had its own hymnal in 1808, but only the publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern in England in 1860 and the 'quietly pervasive force for all that was highest in Hymnody', F. D. Hunting- ton, led to the present high level of church music. Between the hymns approved by a general convention and the Church Hym- nal of 1872, Bishop Eastburn was at the least deeply interested in the music of the
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Boston was in the van of New York, with Hayter, organist of the Handel and Haydn Society, also organist at Trinity. Music was a chronic problem at St. Paul's, Boston, also. In the annually in- creasing amounts of money spent on music, the outright competitive aspect of Episcopal Churches with one another and with other sects showed itself.34 Although Bishop Eastburn's interest in music at- tempted to raise the level of selection and performance for the whole diocese, as rector of Trinity, Boston, he could have a direct influence only in his own parish.
Having appraised the needs of the diocese, and having indicated what he considered its immediate problems, Bishop Eastburn set- tled down in Boston into what appears to have been a somewhat lonely life. As rector of Trinity and bishop of the diocese, he had to rely on assistants. The Greene fund for an assistant minister at Trinity maintained an additional cleric in that parish, which re- leased the rector-bishop for diocesan acts, which he could not dele- gate to an assistant.35 Eastburn's first residence in Boston was at Pemberton Square. Here the then assistant bishop lived with his mother, wife, and sister.36 Across the Square from the assistant bishop's house lived Amos Adams Lawrence, who on 31 March
Church. Winfred Douglas, Mus. Doc., Church Music in History and Practice (New York, 1940 [1937]), pp. 260, 262-263; JGC, 1829, II, 191.
34. 'St. Paul's Vestry Records', Bk. I and II, passim; for the music budget in 1866-67, see Bk. II, p. 260. In 1834 E. A. Newton of St. Stephen's, Pittsfield, wrote Bishop Griswold asking him if oratorios were 'a proper entertainment for Christian peo- ple?' Griswold answered that as 'amuse- ment' oratorios were 'improper'. As a form of worship, sung in church to raise money for the poor, the bishop would certainly regret' having them performed in his par- ish church, but he did admit the expedi- ency of having such music 'for a charitable purpose'. Stone, Griswold, pp. 393-396.
35. The assistant minister at Trinity when Eastburn became its rector was John
L. Watson. Watson had ministered in Trinity since 1836, and was the only priest in charge from 1838 till Eastburn's induc- tion. He served on the standing committee of the diocese from 1838 to 1842, and un- der him, Trinity's condition was reported as thriving. JM, year cited; also JED. East- burn did not get along with Watson, who in 1846 'thought it expedient to resign'. Trinity Church, p. 57. T. M. Clark, former rector of Grace Church, Boston, succeeded Watson, 1847-50. Clark referred to his years at Trinity as a position of 'mossy quietude'. George K. Clarke, Descendants of Nathaniel Clarke, etc. (Boston, 1902), p. 108.
36. 'Diary of Amos A. Lawrence, 1842- 1858', pp. 1, 29, Dec. 1842. Mr. Lawrence wrote of the bishop's wife, 'We have seen but little of his wife, 'tho she has been here these 3 weeks; she is an invalid.'
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1842 had married Sarah Elizabeth, daughter of William Appleton. When Mr. Appleton was visiting his daughter and son-in-law early on the morning of 15 February 1843, Sarah saw Bishop Griswold fall on the sidewalk as he was about to call on his new assistant. Bishop Griswold died a few minutes later almost in the arms of Bishop Eastburn, Amos A. Lawrence, and William Appleton.37 With the addition of William Richards Lawrence, the only brother of Amos A. Lawrence, and of the Reverend Charles Mason, who in 1838 had married Susan (Susanna) Lawrence, sister of William R. and Amos A. Lawrence, these four men sustained and guided the diocese under Bishop Eastburn. Two other Boston families had an equally important part in the history of the diocese during East- burn's episcopate: the families of Richard Henry Dana (1815-82) and of George Cheyne Shattuck (1813-93).
William Appleton had been one of the four diocesan delegates 'to invite Dr. Eastburn to become Bishop'.38 Only at this time (1842) did Appleton devote so much of his thought to religion as finally to resolve 'to be a whole Christian'. Appleton had been closely associated with the early years of St. Paul's Church and had been on intimate terms with its rectors.39 To join the Church by the rite of confirmation, however, appeared to him as a public pro- fession of faith or a reversion to the religion of his forebears. Hav- ing moved away from a rural or small-town existence, and entering business in Boston, men such as William Appleton naturally hesi- tated before making an avowal of their faith before the eyes of the world or even before their own parish. Again, the doctrine of the
37. Selections from the Diaries of William Appleton, 1786-1862 (Boston, 1922), pp. 100-101; William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, With Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence (Boston and New York, 1888), p. 234.
38. Appleton, Diaries, 3 Oct. 1842, p. 97. William Appleton's business career, like that of his fellow churchman, E. A. Newton, followed that 'of many of the mer- chants of this city [Boston ] who have risen to distinguished eminence and usefulness.
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, v (Mar. 1862), 460. Appleton had made his fortune by 1825, and spent the rest of his life as an invalid, although with periods of activity in business. Robert Means Lawrence, M.D., The Descendants of Major Samuel Lawrence (Cambridge, 1904), pp. 120-121.
39. 'St. Paul's Vestry Records', I, 1, 15; [Samuel F. Jarvis, ] A Narrative of Events, etc. (n.p., n.d.), p. 62; Appleton, Diaries, passim.
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Church as a group of the elect, the Saints, persisted in the thinking of prominent Episcopalians in the diocese. Financially successful as they were, E. A. Newton, William Appleton, Amos A. Lawrence felt spiritually unworthy to receive Holy Communion.40 The con- tribution that Bishop Griswold, and Potter, Stone, and Vinton, successive rectors of St. Paul's, Boston, made to the history of the diocese was to inspire these laymen with the conception of the Church as a group or society of unworthy men meeting together to seek the one means of redemption, available to all through God's freely bestowed grace to mankind.41 Compared to the preaching and theology heard at Trinity, there were overtones of revivalism in the sermons given at St. Paul's. The Book of Common Prayer and hymns approved by the Church kept the Sunday services strictly to form42 at St. Paul's, but that the sermons had an emo- tional as well as an intellectual and spiritual appeal showed in the attention which some of the hearers gave to them. The St. Paul's sermons would have disturbed the 'mossy quietude' of Trinity.
Important as the influence of the spoken word of the clergy was, the history of the diocese was more certainly affected by those basic, though unassayable bonds of marriage, family, and friend- ship among Church members. That his wife, Mary Anne Cutler, "was a communicant in the Episcopal Church', prior to their mar- riage in 1815 may have directed William Appleton toward the Church. 43 What decided him on the public profession of faith, the
40. Newton joined the Church in 1832, aged 47 years; Appleton in 1838, aged 51 years; A. A. Lawrence in 1842, aged 27. Kate M. Schutt, The First Century of St. Stephen's Parish, 1830-1930 (Pittsfield, 1930), p. 30; Appleton, Diaries, pp. 63, 93. A New York churchman, a contemporary of Newton and Appleton, Cooper joined the Church only ten weeks before his death in 1851. James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper ([New York, ] 1949), p. 255.
41. Appleton, Diaries, 1, 49, 52; A. A. Lawrence, 'Diary, 1836-1839', entries for 2 Jan., 7 July 1839. Bishop Lawrence
said of his father, A. A. Lawrence, that his 'devotional spirit had sent him to the Prayer Book, which led him into closer sympathy with the Episcopal Church'. Lawrence, Lawrence, p. 55.
42. Revivalism is used here in the sense of a stirring up of, or a renewed interest in, religion, not in the 'frontier' sense.
43. Appleton, Diaries, p. 223. Mary Anne Cutler was the daughter of James Cutler and Mehitable Sullivan, and a granddaughter of Gov. James Sullivan. Thomas C. Amory, collector, Materials for a History of the Family of Sullivan (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1893), pp. 152-153.
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rite of confirmation, was his wish to be 'an example to my children . . ".44 With his second son, 'my dear Amory', Appleton received the laying on of hands by Bishop Griswold on 8 April 1838. His love for his children was inseparable from his desire that they, un- like himself a self-styled 'half-Christian', should be 'whole' Chris- tians.45 Appleton's concern with the spiritual welfare of his chil- dren was matched, naturally enough, with an anxiety for their ma- terial well-being. His success in business resulted ultimately in an attempt to provide security for his children and their families. Yet, provision for material comfort brought in its train his abiding solicitude for his and his family's realization of their dependence upon the Church as the only bond of family unity and coherence. 46 As No. 54 Beacon Street was the center of the Appleton family's life in things material, so St. Paul's Church, across Boston Com- mon, was the focus of its existence in things spiritual. Here Apple- ton had been present at the burial in his family tomb beneath the church, of his mother, six of his children, and even some of his grandchildren.47 His house on Beacon Street was another home for the successive rectors of St. Paul's from the Rev. S. F. Jarvis to William R. Nicholson. 48 The Rev. A. H. Vinton and Bishop Alon- zo Potter became Appleton's closest friends.
44. Appleton, Diaries, p. 63. Appleton also considered it a public profession of faith to join 'in partaking of the Holy Com- munion'. The 'public' aspect troubled him less than 'having my mind, as it is, so much engrossed in the pursuit of the things of this world'. Diaries, p. 52.
45. Entries in the diaries supporting this point read: 'I went this day [8 Apr. 1838] with my dear Amory and was con- firmed ... this I did in part as an example to my children.' 'At church with all the children [1841 ].' Easter, 1842: 'Our dear Mary Ann went for the first time to the Communion; I felt it very much. . . . ' 'I be- lieve, Help, Lord, my unbelief.' Christmas, 1843: 'We had the great satisfaction of go- ing to the Communion table this day with two of our sons and two daughters; our eldest son Frank for the first time. The
place our dear Amory filled [he had died 29 June 1843, and his funeral held at St. Paul's ] is vacant in my heart; I loved him much. .. . ' Diaries, pp. 83, 91, 107.
46. Looking back over the past year, on 31 Dec. 1838, Appleton wrote: ‘When I look about me and see the wonderful kindness of the Supreme Being to me in giving us such amiable children, endowed with a full share of health [and] reason, together with this world's goods [more than $600,000] far above what fall to the lot of most men, I pause.' Diaries, p. 64. Appleton survived his wife and six of their ten children, only one of whom died in infancy. Appleton, Appleton Family, pp. 45-46, 63; Diaries, p. 196.
47. Diaries, pp. 96, 162, 196.
48. Appleton wrote under date of 3 Mar. 1859, 'Meeting Proprietors St. Paul's
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Potter, who had twice been the first choice for Bishop of Massa- chusetts, but had preferred to remain a Professor at Union College, had agreed to give a series of Lowell lectures in Boston in 1844-45.49 He had also visited at Appleton's home after he left Boston in 1831, he named a son born in 1842 William Appleton Potter, and the two friends wrote many letters to each other.50 Potter's course of lectures on 'Natural History' in the winter of 1844-45 was listened to by some 3000 persons, while over 1700 were not fortunate enough to draw tickets. Boston audiences and lecture enthusiasts, in mid-nineteenth century, however, preferred to hear more about science and art than religion. The lectures by Asa Gray on botany drew 5500 during the same season that Potter gave his courses.51
Following Potter at St. Paul's had been John Seely Stone under whose rectorship Appleton had first received the Holy Commun- ion and had been confirmed. Then in 1842 Alexander Hamilton Vinton had been called to St. Paul's from Providence, where he
Church; authorized by a vote 43-2 to in- vite Dr. Nicholson to become our Rector.' As a follow-up to this meeting, he records under 13 May 1859, 'Dr. and Mrs. Nichol- son came to stop with us; some thirty or forty persons to meet them in the evening. 15th. Two sermons from Dr. N .; very well received but long,-45 and 50 mins. 17th. Our friends left us . . . I fancy he will be- come Rector of St. Paul's, I hope he will; there will be opposition, but he is a Man of talents and discretion and will soon over- come it, I trust and doubt not if he shor- tens his Sermons.' Diaries, p. 216. Nichol- son was rector of St. Paul's from 1859 to 1872.
49. Potter gave in all five courses of Lowell lectures between 1844 and 1853, amounting to sixty lectures. The trustees of the Lowell Institute, established in 1839-40, 'were very properly solicitous . . . to secure the services of men who would give substantial instruction to the people and win honor to the Institute by their na- tional reputation'. M. A. DeWolfe Howe,
Memoirs . . . of the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter, etc. (Philadelphia, 1871), p. 120; Harriette Knight Smith, The History of the Lowell In- stitute (Boston, etc., 1898), pp. 52-54. Howe points out that Potter, though a priest for twenty years, had only had a par- ish for five years, St. Paul's, Boston. He was by reputation and name Professor Potter. With his consecration to the Diocese of Pennsylvania 23 Sept. 1845 he turned from his scholastic career to a clerical course, and henceforth was Bishop Potter in name and deed. That he gave the Lowell lectures was due to their financial return and to the friendships he had made in Boston. Howe, Potter, pp. 123-126.
50. Potter's letters to Appleton out- number all other Potter letters extant. Howe, Potter, p. 91.
51. In the 1844-45 season, Arthur Gil- man, designerofseveral Episcopalchurches, lectured on architecture; Henry D. Rogers on geology; Asa Gray on botany; and Pot- ter on natural religion. The first three each gave their lectures twice to a total audience of 16,500. Shattuck, Census of Boston, p. 75.
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was rector of Grace Church. 52 Beginning in 1842, Vinton served as St. Paul's rector until the fall of 1858.53 Like his predecessors Pot- ter and Stone, Vinton was a convert to the Episcopal Church. Bish- op Clark, who knew him well, wrote that Vinton's conversion followed from his observation of a patient, a young woman, whom he had treated during the brief term in which he had practiced medicine. That his patient's 'Christian faith ... [was] able to in- spire such a sufferer . . . with so much quietness and peace', led him to 'the reading of Butler's Analogy, and this determined the whole tenor of his life; he gave up his practice as a physician, and entered upon his great career as a minister of Christ'.54 Bishop Griswold instituted Vinton into the office of rector on 11 May 1842.55 Vinton had come to Boston some time before this and al- ready was acquainted with the Appleton and Lawrence families. On the thirty-first of March 1842, at Appleton's house on Beacon Street, the rector-elect of St. Paul's performed the marriage cere- mony, 'in a very acceptable manner', of Sarah Elizabeth, second daughter of William Appleton, and Amos Adams Lawrence, son of Amos Lawrence. 56 This union of Appletons and Lawrences was not without consequence in diocesan affairs. The Lawrence family had already taken a step toward the Episcopal Church, when Susanna, younger sister of Amos A. Lawrence, married, in 1838, the Rev. Charles Mason, rector of St. Peter's, Salem, and son of Jeremiah Mason, formerly of Portsmouth, but more recently of Boston. 57
52. Dr. John Collins Warren, acting for the proprietors of St. Paul's, wrote to Vin- ton 1 Nov. 1841. Vinton answered on the 6th, asking 'for a few weeks delay-when I will give a formal answer'. 'Warren Papers' (Massachusetts Historical Society), 1841- June 1844, Vol. 20.
53. John Adams Vinton, The Vinton Memorial, Comprising a Genealogy of the Descendants of John Vinton of Lynn, etc. (Boston, 1858), pp. 206, 285-287; Thomas M. Clark, Reminiscences (New York, 1895), pp. 94-97.
54. Clark, Reminiscences, pp. 96-97.
55. JED, 1842, pp. 14-15.
56. Appleton, Diaries, p. 92.
57. Theodore West Mason, Family Rec- ord . . . of Descent from Major John Mason of Norwich, Connecticut (New York, 1909), pp. 25-27. Jeremiah Mason, father of Charles, married, in 1799, Mary Means, daughter of Col. Robert Means of Amherst, N. H. Amos Lawrence married, in 1821 (two years after his first wife died), Nancy (Means) Ellis, a widow, and a sister of Mrs. Jeremiah (Mary Means) Mason. New Hampshire Historical Society, Collections (Concord, 1837), v, 103-104. Lawrence, Descendants of Major Lawrence, p. 121.
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Vinton's next service to the Church and diocese was to prepare a group for confirmation, with the result that nearly fifty candidates offered themselves to Bishop Griswold on 29 May 1842. The group included Amos A. Lawrence and his wife, Sarah Appleton; William Richards Lawrence, older brother of Amos A., and his wife Susan Coombs Dana, together with Mary Anne Appleton, William Ap- pleton's oldest daughter, also were presented to the bishop by Vinton.58 Vinton kept a watchful eye on at least two of his con- firmation candidates, Amos A. and Sarah Lawrence, whom he had married on 31 March of that same year. The young people, who were traveling in the south and were then at Richmond, Virginia, received a letter from Vinton exhorting his 'very dear friends ... not to be afraid of taking too exalted views of the Christian Calling or of being too short and uncompromising in christian duty'.59 As brilliant and kindly a rector as Vinton was, his views of the Church were cast in the usual parochialism which characterized the Diocese of Massachusetts. One other fact which properly pertained to the history of the diocese, and strengthened the bonds of the Appleton-
58. Appleton, Diaries, p. 93; Lawrence, Lawrence, p. 55. A. A. Lawrence only joined the Episcopal Church after much thinking about religion as represented at least by several of the Boston churches. His son, the late Bishop Lawrence (William), put the prayer book as the prime influence. His diary, however, reveals that the Ortho- dox (Congregational) 'views' of religion offered the best influence in the communi- ty. In the Episcopal Church he found the same 'orthodox views', with the added warmth of the presence of his brother Wil- liam, of the William Appleton family, of the Rev. Charles and Robert Means Mason, and of the personality and sermons of the Rev. J. S. Stone at St. Paul's. Lawrence, Lawrence, p. 55; Lawrence, 'Diary, 1836- 1839', entries for 2 July 1837, 10 Feb. 1838, 7 July 1839. His father, Amos Law- rence, a member of the Brattle Square Church, approved of the Episcopal Church enough to allow the marriage of his daugh- ter, Susan, to the Rev. Charles Mason, and not to discourage William and Amos from
joining the Church with their wives. Wil- liam R. Lawrence was baptized 12 Oct. 1812 by the Rev. W. E. Channing in the Brattle Square Church. Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, 1699- 1872 (Boston, 1902), p. 119, 215.
59. 'A. A. Lawrence Letter Books', vol. IV, letter from A. H. Vinton, Boston, to A. A. Lawrence, 6 May 1842. The general attitude toward religion in this country at this time appeared from Vinton's letter in which he writes, 'I know from satisfactory experience as well as from observation that the effect of journeying is dissipating to the habits and feelings of a Christian. We are so much the creatures of circumstances, and accustomed associations have such power, that even our devotions are not apt to be so cordial and refreshing when we are not in our own closets where we have so often and so delightfully conversed with God,-or not in our own church where the truth has so often humbled or cheered or nourished us and where our souls naturally turn as to a sort of home.'
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Lawrence-Mason family connections, was the 'co-partnership' in the textile selling agency and brokerage business of Amos A. Law- rence and Robert Means Mason. 60 The two partners acting together did good work for the diocese and St. Paul's, especially in the last decade of Bishop Eastburn's episcopate.
In detailing the association of a few Boston families with St. Paul's, the position of Trinity Church cannot be overlooked. Trin- ity shared with St. Paul's the foremost place in the diocese in the number of communicants and in the financial resources of its mem- bers. Trinity, however, had a tradition resting on its pre-Revolu- tionary origin, and, therefore, a stability which St. Paul's never de- veloped.61 The success of St. Paul's rested in great measure on the brilliance and personality of Potter, Stone, and Vinton. At Trinity from the time of J. S. J. Gardiner to 1869, when Phillips Brooks re- turned to Boston, there were no great rectors even including Bish- op Eastburn. As one who knew Trinity from close observation, Vinton found Eastburn's failure due to a granitic quality of the minds of the parishioners. Vinton based the enduring strength and continuity of Trinity on the 'traditions that had come down through generations, hooped around with conservative bands that made them rigid, like cast iron'.62 Some of the family names which had members on the vestry of Trinity were those of Amory, Codman, Greene, and Parker. The Rev. Samuel Parker, rector of Trinity from 1779 to 1804, set an example for later generations of Trinity's parishioners, in having twelve children.63 The Gardiner Greene
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