USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23
37. JRI, 1810, p. 27.
38. JRI, 1843, p. 10.
8
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
to the resolution for adjournment, this convention fixed the bish- op's yearly salary at $400.39 In fixing the bishop-elect's salary at this figure, it seemed as if the convention were guided by the rank in geographical area of the state in relation to its sister states.
Maine, a state of the Union and a diocese of the Church from 1820, is some twenty-seven times the size of Rhode Island in area. In 1820 Maine had but two churches, St. Paul's, Portland, and Christ Church, Gardiner.40 Rhode Island had five churches at this time. About a month after Maine's admission into the Union, Bish- op Griswold, by letter from Bristol, Rhode Island, called for a convention. This primary convention of the Diocese of Maine took place on 3 May 1820 at Brunswick.41 At this meeting, the Church in Maine acceded to the constitution of General Convention; the convention also drafted 'a Constitution, Canons, and Rules of Pro- ceeding ... which were unanimously adopted'.42 At this same con- vention, the diocese formally put itself under the episcopal care of Bishop Griswold, who thus became Maine's first diocesan. Since Maine was a district of the State of Massachusetts, no episcopal functions there are recorded as performed by either Bishop Bass or Bishop Parker. 43 Following Griswold's death and the immediately consequent dissolution of the Eastern Diocese, Maine's convention journal of 1843 noted that Bishop Eastburn had declined the re- quest for his temporary episcopal supervision. This same conven- tion then asked Bishop-elect Henshaw of Rhode Island to serve as bishop pro tem, which he did.44 Then, at Portland, at a special con- vention on 4 October 1847, the Rev. George Burgess was unani- mously elected Bishop of Maine. 45 He stands second in the line of
39. JRI, 1843, p. 10.
40. Journals of the Annual and Special Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Maine for the First Twenty-One Years, 1820-1840 (Portland: printed for the convention, 1876), p. 2. Cited as JME and year. St. Paul's, Port- land, was defunct by 1838; a portion of its parish became St. Stephen's. JME, 1839.
41. 'Prefatory Note', in JME, 1820, p. 4.
42. JME, 1820, p. 2.
43. 'Prefatory Note', in JME, 1820, p. 4.
See also the One Hundredth Anniversary of The Diocese of Maine, 1820-1920, Christ Church, Gardiner, Maine, May Thirtieth to June Third (Gardiner, Maine, 1920), pas- sim.
44. JME, 1843, pp. 8, 11; this conven- tion was held on 12 July. Henshaw was consecrated Bishop of Rhode Island on 11 Aug. 1843. See also JME for 1845-1847, for accounts of Henshaw's acts.
45. JME, 1848, pp. 8, 9. Burgess was consecrated 31 Oct. 1847.
9
CHAPTER I
Maine's bishops, in spite of Bishop Henshaw's previous three-year supervision of the diocese.
By means of the Eastern Diocese-a federation of state-dioceses -Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont obtained their first bish- op, while Massachusetts and Rhode Island procured their third bishop, in the one person of Bishop Griswold. 46 That Bishop Gris- wold 'was unanimously elected by the Convention of the Church in Massachusetts .. . ' does not appear in the printed journal for 1810. That Griswold was actually and regularly the third bishop of the diocese is evidenced by every episcopal act that he performed in Massachusetts after his consecration.
This outline account of the Eastern Diocese and of the early years of its four, and, after 1820, its five component dioceses, em- phasizes two major points. The first point was that a very small group of clergy and laymen had a sustained devotion to the Angli- can Church. This small group realized that to keep the Church functioning in any one of the four States of New Hampshire, Ver- mont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, some sort of union was vital for individual diocesan survival. In other words, the Eastern Diocese was an expedient as necessary for the Church in Boston as it was for the Church in Vermont, which had no church structures. Attachment to the Church on the level of the individual's own par- ish primarily (and to the diocese, with which the parish was 'in union', only secondarily) was the dominant motive in the organi- zation and maintenance of the Eastern Diocese. The second point was that the sustained devotion of a few persons to the Anglican Church was adherence, not to the Church of England, but to a Church that was distinctly American. The relationship of the form- er to the latter is usually described as the relationship of mother
46. Unanimous testimonials in favor of the validity of Griswold's election came from the House of Clerical and Lay Depu- ties on 22 May 1811, at general convention meeting in New Haven. The House of Bishops concurred in this action after a delegation from the Lower House, repre- senting Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont gave the Upper House '. ..
satisfaction, that the Rev. Alexander V. Griswold was unanimously elected by the Convention of the Church in Massachu- setts, and so far as the election affected the Church in the other States, it was con- curred in by their respective Conventions, and reported to their several constituents, and approved of by them'. Perry, JGC, I, 386.
10
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
and daughter, in other words two distinct personalities. However, but for the inheritance from the mother, i.e., the Book of Common Prayer and the consecration of bishops for the Church in America, the daughter would not have survived.
This survival in the Diocese of Massachusetts, then, was due pri- marily to the Book of Common Prayer, and no less importantly to the establishment of the American episcopacy. The history of the diocese could be written from the selected viewpoints of music, architecture, and geographical areas within the Commonwealth; it could also be related from the biographical standpoint of promi- nent laymen, clergymen, and, of course, from the lives and back- ground of Bishops Griswold and Eastburn; it could be written from the parochial level. Confining himself to any one of these approach- es, the historian could go deeply into the subject, but at a sacrifice of breadth and scope. With the attempt to keep in mind "the total situation', and include something of the manifold approaches to the subject, the following study was undertaken.
CHAPTER II
LTHOUGH the Diocese of Massachusetts dated its origin from the diocesan meeting of 8 September 1784, held at Boston, not until the consecration of Alexander Viets Griswold as Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, on 29 May 1811, did the Church in Massa- chusetts permanently emerge from its pre-Revolutionary status. Then some thirty years elapsed before the Diocese of Massachusetts again obtained its own diocesan with the consecration of Manton Eastburn, 29 December 1842. Eastburn's episcopacy ended with his death nearly thirty years later, 11 September 1872. During the six decades from 1811 to 1872, both clergy and laymen, acting through General Convention, but more importantly in the diocesan conventions and parishes, molded the church into the form it re- veals today in the state's two dioceses, Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts. 1
For nearly eight years, 1804 to 1811, the Diocese of Massachu- setts was in the anomalous position of having no bishop. The Dio- ceses of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island suffered un- der a like handicap. However narrowly episcopal functions were viewed in these four dioceses, it was apparent that the Episcopal Church would soon be sapped of any significant vitality. To fore- stall any such possibility, clerical and lay delegates from the four dioceses met in a united convention at Boston on 29 May 1810. This convention drew up a constitution for an organization named the Eastern Diocese, comprising the four Dioceses of New Hamp- shire, Vermont, Massachusetts (including the district of Maine),
1. The Diocese of Massachusetts was conterminous with the state boundaries until 1901, at which time the portion of the Commonwealth west of the eastern bound-
ary of Worcester County, excluding the town of Southborough, was organized as the Diocese of Western Massachusetts.
[11 ]
12
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
and Rhode Island. At this same meeting Alexander Viets Griswold of St. Michael's Church, Bristol, Rhode Island, was chosen bishop- elect of this newly formed Eastern Diocese. 2
The new diocese in no way supplanted or limited the functions of its four previously existing components, but was a purely ad hoc creation to secure the episcopal offices of confirmation, ordination, and consecration of churches. Although the four dioceses had lim- its conterminous with their state boundaries, the weakness of the Church in the number of laymen and clergy, as well as the lack of money for building churches and for clerical salaries, combined with the scarcity of acceptable candidates for the episcopacy, ne- cessitated the joint action of the four dioceses to maintain one bish- op. The constitution of the Eastern Diocese provided for a stand- ing committee of five clergymen and four laymen, and for a biennial convention, at which the bishop presided and presented his report on the state of the diocese. Beginning in 1823, the conventions were held annually. There were also the annual conventions of the four dioceses where the standing committees made their reports, where the committees for the following year were chosen, where new parishes presented their credentials for union, where delegates to General Convention and trustees of the General Theological Seminary were named, and where various financial matters, both parochial and diocesan, were reported, considered, and acted up- on. Bishop Griswold usually attended each of these diocesan con- ventions, but acted only in an advisory capacity. The actual au- thority, administratively and financially, lay in the state dioceses, not in the Eastern Diocese. General Convention recognized the Eastern Diocese only as the see of its bishop, a see which had no authority, representation, or voting power apart from its bishop sitting in the House of Bishops. The four state dioceses were repre- sented in General Convention by their appointed delegates, lay and cleric.
2. John Seely Stone, Memoir of Alex- ander Viets Griswold (Philadelphia, 1844), contains the best account of the formation and growth of the Eastern Diocese. The
journals of the Eastern Diocese including the addresses of Bishop Griswold pro- vide invaluable supplementary material.
13
CHAPTER II
To the Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, however, the Diocese of Massachusetts, as well as the other three member dioceses, was beholden for his annual visit to each parish and his observations in regard to these parishes beyond his purely episcopal functions. Owing to the normal difficulties of travel and the lack of time and traveling expenses, and also to a lack of diocesan interest and a parochial outlook, clergy and laymen alike did not usually attend the annual state-diocesan conventions unless held within a few miles of their homes. Bishop Griswold, however, made it his busi- ness to visit every parish at least annually, unless prevented by illness, or difficulties within the parishes themselves. From his re- ports to the Eastern Diocese on these parochial visitations came a great source of information, a kind of clearinghouse of facts, which revealed to each state diocese conditions good and not good within their bounds. Shortly after Bishop Griswold was consecrated, he reported that 'In Massachusetts were thirteen churches, three of them of but little value, and very little used.'' The clergy numbered only six or seven. The diocesan report of Massachusetts to General Convention in 1811 stated that 'In some parts of this common- wealth, it is greatly to be lamented that the Churches are in a state of derangement and decay'; but adds, 'in other places the congre- gations have increased'. 4
The dominant centers of the Church were in Boston and New- buryport. As the stronghold of the Church of England prior to 1776, as the capital of the state, and as an important commercial and shipping point, Boston had not only maintained the Church's services at Trinity Church during the Revolution, but had re- opened Christ Church, although King's Chapel, the only other Church edifice in Boston, had been taken over by the Unitarians in 1784. To Boston, also, or to its immediate vicinity, came families from lesser seaports and from the country, headed by men who had
3. Journal of the Proceedings of the Con- vention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Eastern Diocese, 1839, with the Bishop's Address (Boston, 1839), p. 14 (hereinafter cited as JED with year date).
4. William Stevens Perry, D.D., editor,
Journals of General Convention of the Prot- estant Episcopal Church in the United States, 1785-1835 (published by authority of Gen- eral Convention, Claremont, N.H., 1874, 3 vols.), 1, 379.
14
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
made money during the Revolution. Such men found it to their advantage to carry on their shipping, commercial, financial, pro- fessional, and social interests in Boston. Some of these families al- lied themselves with the Episcopal Church in Boston.5 Another factor in the numerical strength of the Church in Boston was the presence of Englishmen who settled in Massachusetts after the Revolution. 6
In Newburyport, St. Paul's Church had already given to the diocese its first bishop, Edward Bass, and in 1811, the Rev. James Morss was completing seven years of his ministry of nearly forty years in this parish. Active Newburyport laymen included Tristram Dalton, Edward S. Rand, Sr., and Dudley Atkins Tyng.
The career of Dudley Atkins Tyng (1760-1829) in connection with the Diocese of Massachusetts early revealed the affiliation of business, professional, and social interests with Church affairs.7 Born of a family whose 'ancestry had been, in every generation, members of the Church of England',8 Dudley Atkins Tyng had chosen the Church as his vocation. Hindered by travel difficulties from going to England at the time of his graduation from Harvard in 1781, he turned to the study of law, supporting himself mean- while by tutoring in a wealthy Virginia family.9 Having been ad- mitted to the Virginia bar, he returned to Newburyport in 1784, served for a time as a justice of the peace for Essex County, and opened a law office. Shortly after his return to Newburyport this gentleman, who had been born Dudley Atkins, legally added Tyng to his name in order to inherit a portion of the estate of a distant
5. Families notable in the diocese were those of Stephen Higginson (1743-1828), born at Salem, and Daniel Sargent (1731- 1806), born at Gloucester.
6. Edward Augustus Newton (1785- 1862) born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, was pre-eminent in this group.
7. The biographical facts of Dudley At- kins Tyng's life are found in John J. Cur- rier, History of Newburyport, Mass., 1764- 1905 (Newburyport, 1906, 2 vols.); impor- tant also are Francis Higginson Atkins,
Joseph Atkins, The Story of a Family (n.p., 1891), and 'Biographical Notice of the Late Dudley Atkins Tyng, L.L.D., by his Intimate Friend, John Lowell', Massachu- setts Historical Society Collections, Third Series, II (XXII, 1830), 280-295; Record of the Life and Work of the Rev. Stephen Hig- ginson Tyng, D.D., etc., compiled by his son, Charles Rockland Tyng (New York, 1890).
8. Tyng, Tyng, p. 17.
9. Ibid.
15
CHAPTER II
and childless relative, Mrs. Sarah Winslow of Tyngsborough. He moved to Tyngsborough after the death of Mrs. Winslow, but find- ing that his inheritance was agriculturally unproductive land, he turned his attention to the construction of the canal around the [Pawtucket] falls below Tyngsborough, which opened the free navigation of the [Merrimack ] river from the upper country, and prepared the site and the power for the large and flourishing city of Lowell. . . '.10 Returning to Newburyport about 1795, Tyng was "Collector for the Port of Newbury' from that year till 1803. For the next eighteen years he lived in Boston, serving as the Reporter of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and preparing its decisions for publication.
Concurrently with Tyng's business and professional activities, he was continuously active in Church affairs. Chosen as secretary for the diocesan convention in its first two years of existence, 1790 and 1791, he was named to the standing committee of the diocese for 1797, and for 1799 to 1805.11 At about the time he moved to Boston, or shortly after the death of Bishop Bass, 10 September 1803, Tyng was urged 'to receive orders first as a deacon and then as a presbyter', that he might be elected Bishop of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 'With a modesty characteristic of himself, how- ever,' says Bishop Griswold's biographer, 'he shrank from the pro- posal and finally rejected it.'12 Nonetheless, the Church's interests remained close to his heart, and through his widespread acquaint- ance with churchmen he was largely responsible for securing from the Diocese of Massachusetts a delegation to a meeting in 1809 of lay and clerical delegates from Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, a meeting that led to the formation of the Eastern Diocese the following year. 13 Previously, in 1790, Tyng had been a member of the committee appointed by the diocesan convention of 1790 'to frame a Plan of an Ecclesiastical Constitu- tion for the Government of the Episcopal Churches in this Com- monwealth, and such other Churches as may be admitted and ac-
10. Currier, Newburyport, II, 267-268; Tyng, Tyng, p. 18.
11. JM, 1784-1828, pp. 24, 27, 32, 60,
70, 74, 78, 81, 89, 91, 96, 99, 101.
12. Stone, Griswold, p. 137.
13. Stone, Griswold, pp. 146-147.
16
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
cede to the same . . .. 14 It was noteworthy that the Church conven- tions were held close upon the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the state ratifying conventions following it. The Federalist Party and the Diocese of Massachusetts grew up together. Tyng was a Federalist and from President Adams received his re-appointment to the office of Collector of Customs noted above. 15
Tyng married, in 1792, Sarah, daughter of Stephen Higginson of Salem and Boston. 16 Stephen Higginson was active in the Church and served on the standing committee of the diocese from 1796 to 1798, and from 1801 to 1806.17 Tyng's home in Boston belonged to his father-in-law, and here his son, Stephen Higginson Tyng, later rector of St. George's, New York City, spent his boyhood. 18 It was at the home of Dudley Atkins Tyng, on the evening of 11 March 1820, that the wardens and vestrymen of St. Paul's Church, then in the process of building, first met.19 Tyng was made senior warden of this newly formed society.
Although the parish of St. Paul's Church, Boston, was the fifth parish to be 'gathered' after the organization of the diocese, its his- tory is a major part of the history of the diocese, and its influence, especially for the first thirty years of its life, was not limited to the diocese alone. 20
The beginnings of St. Paul's Church centered in the desire of some members of Trinity Church for a church or chapel which would not only offer a better location for families living near the
14. Other members of this committee were the Rev. Dr. Walter, the Rev. Dr. Bass, the Rev. Mr. Fisher, Hon. Mr. Dal- ton, and Mr. Stockbridge. Dalton, Bass, and Tyng were from Newburyport. JM, 1790, pp. 20-21.
15. Tyng, Tyng, p. 19.
16. Currier, Newburyport, II, 268.
17. JM, 1784-1828, pp. 60, 70, 81, S9, 91, 96. 99, 101.
18. Tyng, Tyng, pp. 19, 23-26. In his later life Stephen Higginson Tyng wrote, To me, Boston was the abode of family connections, both of my father's and my mother's side, including a large portion of
the best families in the town. It seemed to me that I knew every family in the place.' Tyng, Tyng, p. 25.
19. Records of the Vestry of St. Paul's Church, Boston, I, 1.
20. The other four parishes antedating St. Paul's were Trinity, Lenox (1793), St. Mary's, Newton Lower Falls (1812), St. James', Greenfield (1812), and St. Mat- thew's, South Boston (1816). A history of St. Paul's Church is yet to be written. The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary . . . of St. Paul's Church, Boston. A Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Wm. Lawrence (Boston, 1895) is brief but good.
17
CHAPTER II
Common, but would also provide preaching of a more evangelical note and less of a deistic tone than the sermons of Dr. John S. J. Gardiner, Trinity's rector.21 The minister of the new church or chapel of ease was to be the assistant minister of Trinity Church on the Greene Foundation. At this time (1818), the trustees of the Greene Foundation had fixed on the Rev. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, D.D., then rector of St. Michael's (Bloomingdale) and St. James' parishes in New York City, as the new assistant minister.22 Jarvis, the only son of Abraham Jarvis, Bishop of Connecticut from 1797 to 1813, had a reputation for great learning; he thus would rival favorably the Rev. Messrs. N. L. Frothingham, Henry Ware, Hosea Ballou, and William E. Channing, all contemporary preachers in other Boston churches.23 Jarvis valued his own services rather highly, and in considering the offer of Trinity Church, he made it clear that later (with the completion of a chapel of ease) he was to be- come associate rector, with authority, powers, and salary like those of Dr. Gardiner.24 Bishop Griswold wrote him, saying, 'It has long been my wish that this Diocese [Massachusetts ] might have the aid of your labours.' The Rev. Asa Eaton of Christ Church also urged Jarvis to come to Boston. 25
Late in 1818, having discussed the terms of Jarvis' acceptance, the trustees of the Greene Foundation notified him that after a 'consideration of the expediency of erecting a chapel of ease to Trinity Church ... it was decided by the majority present that it was incompatible with the trust confided to us-and here our la- bours ended'. 26
Dissatisfaction of younger members of Trinity Church with its services, and the desire for a new religious society by members of Episcopal, Congregational, and Unitarian Churches brought about a group, early in 1819, who banded together to build a Church that would be of historic order, but modern in spirit; of English in-
21. Jarvis MSS, 1820 Letter.
22. William B. Sprague, D.D., Annals of the American Pulpit: Episcopalian (New York, 1859), V, 531.
23. Morgan Dix, ed., A History . . . of
Trinity Church . . . New York (New York, 1905), III, 50.
24. Jarvis MSS, 1820 Letter.
25. Ibid.
26. Jarvis MSS.
18
THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
heritance, but American in character'.27 This group, acting through George Sullivan, asked Jarvis to be the rector of a proposed parish which would occupy a new church building, 'in a central situa- tion'.28 Jarvis received on 24 March 1819 a subscription paper for the proposed church bearing date of 12 March 1819, which showed less than fifty signatures; each signature represented a subscription to shares priced at $500 a share.29 Most of the subscribers ... were persons who had been educated Congregationalists or Baptists, or the younger branches of Episcopalian families who had left the Ch[urch] and united themselves with the various dissenting So- cieties'.30 As the society appeared to lack funds and had not yet become legally incorporated, Jarvis did not agree to serve as rector, but he did urge Sullivan to build the new church in 'Gothic style'. 31
While Sullivan was begging Jarvis to assure him that he would accept the position of rector of St. Paul's, the General Theological Seminary was just being organized in New York City. Jarvis was appointed one of the two professors of the seminary, and was to have a salary of $2500 a year, and $500 'in lieu of a house'.32 Fear- ing for the continuance of the seminary, and not having received his expected salary, on 6 May 1819, Jarvis gave his 'assurance that he would accept the rectorship of the church [in Boston] when it should be duly offered'.33
In Boston, the subscriptions for a new church were selling slowly. A building committee, however, had been named by the subscrib- ers, and this committee had advertised for a site of land, 'about twelve thousand square feet'. 34 The present site of St. Paul's Cathe-
27. Lawrence, Sermon, pp. 12-13.
28. Jarvis MSS, 1820 Letter; Boston Daily Advertiser, 24 April 1819.
29. Jarvis MSS, 1820 Letter; Lawrence, Sermon, p. 14.
30. Jarvis MSS, 1820 Letter.
31. [Samuel F. Jarvis,] A Narrative of Events, etc. (n.p., n.d.), p. 5.
32. [Samuel H. Turner,] Autobiography of the Rev. Samuel H. Turner, D.D. (New York, 1863), p. 81; Jarvis MSS, Letter from Jarvis to Rufus King, 6 Nov. 1819.
33. [Turner,] Autobiography, p. 93.
34. Robert Means Lawrence, M.D., The Site of St. Paul's Cathedral, Boston, and its Neighborhood (Boston, 1916), p. 94; Boston Daily Advertiser, 24 April 1819. Members of the building committee were George Sullivan (chairman), G. Odin, J. Odin, David Sears, Daniel Webster, F. Wilby, and William Appleton. William Shimmin, Treasurer, and Henry Codman, Secretary of the subscribers, were members ex officio. Records of the Vestry of St. Paul's Church, p. 15.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.