USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 20
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First, it was Appleton's belief that the Church would gain more members among the poor, not because there were more of them, but rather that 'the poor are more susceptible of religious impres- sions than those in the higher walks of life . . . '.10 Then he indicated that a feeling of duty, not a sense of privilege, induced him, at least, to contribute to missions. Finally Appleton feared that inadequate giving would further divide the clergy. A church built, furnished, paid for, and endowed might be a bond of Union among our Cler- gy, who most truly need it'.11 Prior to the laying of the cornerstone of St. Stephen's Chapel on Purchase Street, Appleton attended a meeting in regard to organizing the Boston Episcopal City Mission. Of this meeting he wrote, 'I find such sensitiveness among those who take part in this charity, that I almost doubt if it will be use- ful ... '.12 Nearly three and a half years went by from the time Ap- pleton offered to build "a place of Worship' for the Boston City Mission until the completion of the structure. A general diminu- tion of interest followed from this comparatively long interval. 13
cese, notably the Board of Missions for Seamen. R. H. Dana, Jr., introduced a resolution into the annual convention of 1845 in regard to missionary work for sea- men. The convention voted to appoint a board of twenty men with the Bishop to be ex officio its president'. This board, which filled its own vacancies, included in its members non-Episcopalians, and was at least partly non-sectarian; it ceased to exist in 1870. The reasons for discontinu- ing the mission were that one chapel, 'The Free Church of St. Mary for Sailors', was adequate and that the number of seamen in the port of Boston was smaller than for-
merly, 'partly owing to the decline of com- merce, and partly to the general introduc- tion of steam navigation'. JM, 1845, pp. 44-45; 1870, pp. 50-52.
10. Selections from the Diaries of William Appleton, 1786-1862 (Boston, 1922), pp. 101-102.
11. Appleton, Diaries, p. 102.
12. Appleton, Diaries, p. 110.
13. Appleton wrote a few days before the consecration that 'I find very little in- terest others take in this affair; I fear I have less zeal than when I commenced it, yet, if I am not made better by it, others may be.' Diaries, p. 121.
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Bishop Eastburn consecrated St. Stephen's Free Chapel on 5 Octo- ber 1846. He cited Appleton's additional gift of $10,000, the inter- est on which was 'to be applied to the support of the Minister of the Chapel'.14 Then the bishop noted a $5000 bequest by the late Ed- ward Tuckerman, a fellow parishioner of Appleton's at St. Paul's, Boston, which sum, held in trust, was to go 'towards the mainten- ance of the Incumbent [the Rev. E. M. P. Wells ] of St. Stephen's Chapel'.15 As usual Eastburn hoped that Appleton's example 'may not have been set in vain', and then added, 'Oh that I could have some such acts to record, on every successive occasion on which we meet in annual council together.'16 Whatever the diocese ac- complished in its missionary work in Massachusetts indicated to what extent the diocese valued the Episcopal Church of which it was a part. What was done in diocesan missions under both Gris- wold and Eastburn was a measure of the ability of these diocesans to draw upon what resources the diocese possessed. Unlike New York, for example, where the diocese had an income from paro- chial vested interests, the Diocese of Massachusetts had to rely for the greater part of its income on what the men and women of the Diocese chose to give. 17
14. JM, 1847, pp. 11-12.
15. JM, 1847, p. 12. Appleton gave in all $26,000 to St. Stephen's Chapel. Dia- ries, pp. 122-123.
16. JM, 1847, p. 12.
17. The Price Fund, created under the
will of William Price, dated 30 Nov. 1770, has provided and still provides financial aid to Trinity Church in Boston. Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1896 [1881 ], 2 vols.), II, 420-442.
CHAPTER XVI
S the three parishes of St. Anne's, Lowell, Grace, Lawrence, and Trinity, Haverhill, took firm root in their respective man- ufacturing towns in the Merrimack valley in Massachusetts, Episco- pal societies appeared farther up the river at Nashua and Manches- ter, in the Diocese of New Hampshire. A recent historian of the Diocese of New Hampshire states, "The story of the church in Manchester ... begins with a swiftly flowing river and the estab- lishment of a great textile industry along its banks.'1 The largest of the textile mills was the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. Like the mills in Amesbury and Haverhill, the Amoskeag mills attracted a number of workers who preferred the Episcopal form of worship. The Rev. Theodore Edson of St. Anne's, Lowell, led some of the earliest services, not in the usual hired hall, but in a schoolhouse.2 Then a gift of land for a church building by the Amoskeag mills, and financial help from persons in Portsmouth and Concord en- abled the parish of St. Michael's, organized 29 November 1841, to build a wooden church.3 Bishop Eastburn consecrated St. Michael's Church on 28 December 1843, as Bishop Griswold's successor, Carlton Chase, was not consecrated New Hampshire's second diocesan until the next year.
At Nashua, on the Nashua River near its confluence with the Merrimack, the Nashua Manufacturing Company began operations
1. [The Rev.] Robert Hayes Dunn, 'A History of the Diocese of New Hampshire, 1802-1952', The New Hampshire Church- man v, no. 6 (June 1952), p. 22.
2. The Rev. L. Sears, 'Grace Church', D. Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Hills- borough County, New Hampshire (Philadel-
phia, 1885), p. 104.
3. Dunn, 'Diocese of New Hampshire', p. 23; Hurd, Hillsborough County, p. 104. St. Michael's, organized as parish no. 10 in the Diocese of New Hampshire, changed its name in 1861 to Grace Church. JNH, 1951, p. 69.
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as a 'cotton manufactury' in 1826.4 In 1830 the population of Nash- ua was 2417; in 1840 when its mills had been going some fourteen years, the figure was 6054.5 At Bishop Chase's request, the Rev. Milton Ward began an Episcopal mission in Nashua in 1845, but the mission did not prosper. In 1857 a parish was organized and a church was built and consecrated 15 July 1862 by Bishop Chase as St. Luke's Church. From 1858 to 1861, William Stevens Perry had charge of St. Luke's, having been ordered priest by Bishop East- burn in the earlier year. In the first eleven years of its existence (1857-68), St. Luke's had eight rectors. Then the parish was dor- mant until 1871. Revived in that year, the group of Episcopalians in Nashua changed the name of the parish and built a new church on a different site, which Bishop Niles consecrated in 1878, as the Church of the Good Shepherd. A native of New Hampshire, Mrs. Lucia A. Rand gave upwards of $20,000 as a gift to the parish for the building and furnishing of this church.6 Known as St. Luke's Church until 1872, the Church of the Good Shepherd was the four- teenth church organized in the Diocese of New Hampshire. Trinity Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, organized two years earlier (1855), was about fiftieth in the Diocese of Massachusetts.7
The Rev. Robert Hayes Dunn, in his recent work on the Diocese of New Hampshire, set forth what combination of factors was neces- sary to the success of the parish of Nashua. He listed "The marked personal interest of the bishop [in this instance, Bishop Niles ], the dogged persistence of a small group, the windfall donation of a church building, the wise leadership of several parish priests, the growing population of an industrial town'.8 With two exceptions these factors as has been shown above worked together for the suc- cessful establishment of parishes in Massachusetts. Not as influen-
4. Hurd, Hillsborough County, pp. 176- 177. Nashua was known as Dunstable until 1836.
5. Hurd, Hillsborough County, p. 177.
6. This account of St. Luke's-Church of the Good Shepherd-is based on Dunn, 'Diocese of New Hampshire', pp. 30-31, 51-52; Prof. John Wesley Churchill, His-
tory of The First Church in Dunstable-Nash- ua, N.H., and of Later Churches There (The Fort Hill Press, Boston, 1918), pp. 68-69; Hurd, Hillsborough County, p. 193.
7. JNH, 1951, p. 70.
8. Dunn, 'Diocese of New Hampshire', P. 52 n.
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tial in Massachusetts as in New Hampshire was 'the marked per- sonal interest' of the diocesan as the supervision of half a hundred parishes had to be quite general, while the oversight of scarcely more than a dozen might be quite individual. The second excep- tion in Massachusetts was found in the 'windfall' for a church. In- dividuals such as George Hodges, or mills such as those at Lowell or Lawrence might enable an Episcopal society to acquire a site for a church, and then pay for the building of it, but without any con- tinuing support the congregation might not be able to maintain weekly services, as in Grace Church, Oxford; St. Anne's, Lowell, had to pay back to the mills the cost of the church building.9
The failure of Christ Church in Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, and the influence of Amos A. Lawrence in the community yield some facts of historical interest in the study of both the Dioceses of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In February 1831 a group of persons 'who were of various Christian denominations, with a noble and truly Christian spirit' banded together as an Episcopal society at Salmon Falls. This parish called as its rector the Rev. Henry Blackaller, who, because of 'unpleasant occurrences', had resigned from the nearby parish of Somersworth.10 The society built 'a beautiful little Church, and completely finished it in fine taste'.11 Bishop Griswold dedicated this building as Christ Church on 24 July 1831. Griswold reported that two years previously there was but one Episcopal family in the village.12 The Rev. Samuel McBur- ney took over Christ Church in 1833. Just prior to Bishop Gris- wold's visit in August 1834, a great fire destroyed the factory there; two young women were also fatally burned. As the factory provided the source 'on which the whole village depended for employment and means of living', its destruction caused a wide scattering of the
9. See supra.
10. JED, 1830, p. 9; 1831, p. 21. Salmon Falls is the 'business part' of the town of Rollinsford, which itself was set off from the town (now city) of Somersworth in 1849. Somersworth in its turn was set off from Dover in 1729 and became a town in 1754. 'The first manufacturing company in the state was incorporated at Salmon
Falls in 1761.' Manual for the [N. H. ] Gen- eral Court (Concord, 1951), pp. 143, 179. 11. JED, 1831, p. 21; JNH, 1831, p. 115.
12. JED, 1831, p. 21; JNH, 1831, p. 115. The bishop reported confirming fifteen candidates at Christ Church during his 1831 visitation.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
workers. 13 Mr. McBurney had to leave the largely dispersed parish. Christ Church suspended regular services, 'and its congregation [eventually ] was merged with St. Thomas', Dover'.14
Industry revived, however, at Salmon Falls, and by 1853 Amos A. Lawrence had a considerable interest in the [textile ] manufac- turing establishment' there.15 Mr. Lawrence's mill agent for the Salmon Falls Manufacturing Company, Pliny Lawton, wrote to him on 23 December 1853. In this letter, Lawton stated that he had had 'extreme difficulty to obtain permanent and good help'. He went on to say that American labor was not to be considered. Permanent foreign labor could only be kept at Salmon Falls were the mill own- ers 'to establish a [Roman] church with a smart Priest in the pay of the Company'.16 A Roman society could not be organized without help from beyond the village, as there were places for only one Irish man to 10 or 12 [Irish ] girls'.17 Lawrence gave the number of Roman Catholic operatives, as of January 1854, at the Salmon Falls Company in Rollinsford, N. H., and across the river in Berwick, Maine, as 263, males 52, females 211.
As treasurer of the Salmon Falls Manufacturing Company, Law- rence sought the services of a priest from Bishop Fitzgerald in Bos- ton, and he requested the help of 'Sam Hale, Esq.', Rollinsford, N. H., in selecting a site apart from the mills where the company could build a church. No word of the Company's participation in furthering a Roman Catholic parish was to be revealed.18 Lawton's fear of prejudicing the American girls working at the mills induced Lawrence to ask Hale if he could not find a temporary place for Roman Catholic worship across the Salmon Falls River in Berwick, Maine, rather than in the company 'Hall' in Salmon Falls.19 The
13. JED, 1834, p. 15.
14. Dunn, 'Diocese of New Hampshire', p. 37.
15. 'A. A. Lawrence, Letter Books', vol. II, p. 211. The Salmon Falls Manufacturing Co. included as proprietors Abbott, Amos, and A. A. Lawrence, Robert Mason, and William Appleton. D. Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Rockingham and Strafford Counties, New Hampshire (Philadelphia,
1882), p. 662.
16. A. A. Lawrence Letter Books', vol. II, no. 15.
17. Ibid.
18. 'A. A. Lawrence Letter Books', vol. II, letters to the Rt. Rev. Bishop Fitzpat- rick, pp. 211 and 215; letter to Sam Hale, Esq., 13 Jan. 1854, no. 18.
19. 'A. A. Lawrence Letter Books', vol. II, Hale letter.
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plans went through, for in 1857 a church for a Roman Catholic so- ciety was built at Salmon Falls, 'very near the passenger station of the Boston and Maine Railroad'. 20
The profitableness of the Salmon Falls Company came from the Salmon Falls River, which furnished total power to the mills the year round.21 Yet this power was no more necessary than the 263 Roman Catholic operatives. 'We cannot run our mills at Salmon Falls without them .. . ', wrote Lawrence. 22 From a business view- point alone, then, did he act in providing a Roman Catholic church for part of the mill workers. But for the lack of money to pay a rec- tor, Bishop Carlton Chase could have maintained regular services at Christ Church. The need of this parish and its possibilities, how- ever, as it was not in their own diocese, did not appear to the Epis- copal proprietors of the company to be either a problem or an op- portunity. A Roman society was a matter of business; an Episcopal society in another diocese was not a business affair.
Another sidelight which came from this Salmon Falls Roman Church matter was its illustration of the comparatively friendly feeling toward Romanists in Boston, 23 and the alleged 'prejudice' of the working, American mill girls against their sister mill workers from Ireland. French-Canadian immigrants had not yet permeated the industries of New Hampshire. Bishop Eastburn, nevertheless, did not succumb to any friendly feelings towards Rome, as he was still omitting the parish of the Church of the Advent, Boston, from his parochial visitations.
20. Hurd, ed., Rockingham and Straf- ford Counties, p. 671. Dover, N. H., seat of the Lawrence interests in the Cocheco Mfg. Co., had a Roman Catholic society from 1827, and an Episcopal society from 1839. Hurd, p. 835; JNH, 1840, p. 215.
21. There are two dams [at Salmon Falls ], with a fall of nineteen and twenty- three feet respectively. It has not been found necessary to use steam or any other auxiliary to the motive power, the river so far [1882] having proved amply sufficient.' Hurd, ed., Rockingham and Strafford Counties, p. 662.
22. 'A. A. Lawrence Letter Books', vol.
II, Hale letter.
23. An observation on Boston's attitude toward Romanists in 1852 by an Hungari- an of prominence, Ferenc Aurelius Puls- zky, was that 'The feeling against the Ro- man Catholics has much subsided here in recent times. A convent would not now be burned down by the mob as it was twenty years ago. An intelligent gentleman with whom I spoke on this subject, told me that this turn in public opinion was entirely due to toleration, and not to an approach to the Roman Catholic dogmas. . . . ' Oscar Handlin, ed., This Was America (Cam- bridge, 1949), p. 248.
CHAPTER XVII
'HE last dozen years of Bishop Eastburn's episcopate, and life, saw the diocese provided with a school for clerical training, with the addition of several parishes significant to any history of the diocese, and, despite his influence, with no 'remedial Canon' on the subject of 'tawdry ceremonialism' which, in his words, had 'invaded' some of the parishes and missions of the diocese. During the early years of this period occurred the Civil War.
In the annual convention of May 1861, Bishop Eastburn closed his annual address with a reference to 'A nefarious rebellion ... against the government and laws of the United States'. The re- sponse of the convention was to name a committee which drew up a report; this report was unanimously adopted.1 In phrases bor- rowed from the Book of Common Prayer, the report expressed the sentiment of the diocese by stating its 'heartfelt sympathy with the National Government in all right efforts to uphold the Constitution and vindicate the authority of the FEDERAL UNION . . . '.2 In his ad- dresses of 1862 and 1864 Eastburn cited in the former year the God-given 'skill of our commanders, and the valor of our troops', while in the latter year he bade the diocese 'remember in love the wounded thousands among our soldiery, and among the legions of our misguided enemies'.3 The convention of 1863 heard the bishop urge clergy and laity to pray as the war had had a disastrous in- fluence upon the interests of the kingdom of Christ'.4 Finally in 1865 the bishop expressed his feeling of 'overflowing gratitude to God ... [for a] rebellion at length defeated, its military power
1. JM, 1861, pp. 27-28, 50. The mem- bell. bers of the committee were the Revs. George M. Randall and John S. Stone, and Messrs. Robert M. Mason and Peter Hub-
2. JM, 1861, p. 50.
3. JM, 1862, p. 30; 1864, p. 30.
4. JM, 1864, p. 28.
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broken . . . and [for ] the blotting out of human bondage from every portion of the national territory'." He characterized the 'murder' of Lincoln as a moral lesson 'to humble us! to lead us from depend- ence on human instruments! and to turn us to the Lord God Al- mighty as our only Shield and Buckler'. 6
On the historical level, in the general convention held at Phila- delphia in 1865, the Bishop of Massachusetts introduced a resolu- tion for an additional subject in a service of thanksgiving for peace. This subject was a thanksgiving for 'the establishment of the au- thority of the national government throughout the land . . . '.7 Bish- op Horatio Potter of New York successfully opposed Eastburn's motion, the motion being lost 15 to 7.8
On the parochial level, financial contributions to the Sanitary Commission, the Christian Commission, 'Collections for the bene- fit of Soldiers', "The Soldiers' Relief Society', 'Prayer Books for Soldiers', and aid to other special wartime organizations and causes were reported by the rectors of their respective parishes to the dioc- esan conventions during the war years. These financial gifts were paid for in part by the faithful sewing, packing, services to church fairs of every kind, and other activities of women in the parishes. Special collections' in the parishes, both in money and in clothing, aided the war effort. Mill towns and cities lost population during the war, and the parishes of St. Mary's, Newton Lower Falls, and St. Anne's, Lowell, suffered an actual or relative loss of communi- cants. On the other hand, the number of funds and organizations receiving money from many parishes revealed the war years as financially beneficial to these other parishes.9
Clerical incomes in the diocese did not go up during the Civil War, but the cost of living did. Realizing the hardships which this increase in costs meant to ministers and missionaries with small
5. JM, 1865, p. 31.
6. Ibid.
7. JGC, 1865, p. 165. Besides Eastburn, the other delegates from Massachusetts who lined up with him were: the Revs. Wharton, Babcock, Randall, and Nichol- son, and Messrs. A. A. Lawrence and Ed-
ward S. Rand. JM, 1866, pp. 20-22.
8. JGC, 1865, p. 176.
9. This account of wartime work is based on the parochial reports in JM, 1862-64; 1863, p. 74; 1864, p. 93. Edson reported that Lowell lost an 'estimated' 10,000 of its population.
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salaries, especially were they married and had families, Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Mason wrote to Bishop Eastburn from Paris, indi- cating their wish to help these needy clergy. A little later, in Feb- ruary 1865, Mason wrote to his business partner, Amos A. Law- rence, outlining his plan of help. He and Mrs. Mason offered $10,000 to the diocese, $5000 a year to be spent in two years by adding $250 annually to the salaries of twenty clergymen in 'great- est want'.10 Worried by the High and Low Church parties in the diocese, Bishop Eastburn would not accept sole responsibility in distributing the fund. Mason 'requested' the bishop to talk with Amos A. Lawrence and James Amory about the selections to be made. Mason repeated in a second letter that "The needs of such [clergy ]men is to be the deciding factor, not their differences of opinions'.11 William R. Lawrence, also in Paris, wrote his brother Amos A. Lawrence, suggesting that Amos A. seek the help of Otis Daniell in making up the list of clergy to be helped, if Daniell were not too far 'under the Bishop's influence'.12 Amos A. Lawrence fi- nally made up the list, which included twenty-five clergymen, seven of whom he characterized as Low, six he named as High; the other twelve he did not label.13 Bishop Eastburn acknowledged the 'munificent gift', 'the joint deed', of $10,000 from Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Mason, 'from the distant capital of France', in 1865 and in 1866. He also reported his 'mournful satisfaction, on the 9th of November [1865], of committing her [Mrs. Mason's ] remains to the dust in the blessed words of our Burial Service, in the cemetery of Mount Auburn'. 14
While high prices bore heavily on some married clergymen's salaries in the Civil War period, these same prices helped some businessmen, or they maintained or increased the incomes of men
10. 'A. A. Lawrence Letters', vol. XXVII, no. 190, R. M. Mason, Paris, France, 23 Feb. 1865 to A. A. L., Boston.
11. R. M. Mason, Paris, 16 May 1865, to A. A. L., Boston. A. A. Lawrence Let- ters', vol. XXVIII, no. 52. Said Mason, 'We are Catholic in our notions-my wife says, "tell Amos I think as compared with the
Bishop, I am high church, but not ex- treme" '.
12. William R. Lawrence, Paris, 10 Apr. 1865, to A. A. L. A. A. Lawrence Letters', vol. XXVIII, no. 17.
13. 'A. A. Lawrence Letters', vol. XXVIII, May 1865.
14. JM, 1865, p. 32; 1866, p. 33.
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who had retired from business. Retiring from business in 1856, "that he might learn to dispense wisely what God had put into his hands', Benjamin Tyler Reed literally put into the hands of Ed- ward S. Rand 'the better part of one hundred thousand dollar's worth of negotiable securities .. . ' to establish a theological school.15 Reed, who shortly made his gift up to $100,000, gave this sum in January 1867.16 In the act of incorporation of 1 June 1867, the name of the institution appeared officially as "The Episcopal Theo- logical School'. The omission of the word 'Massachusetts' was, says the school's historian, 'to remove even the suspicion of subordina- tion to the Diocese'.17 Reed had seen the attempts to start a dioce- san theological school in 1830 and 1836, and William Appleton's financial offer for one in 1846. He had also observed what happened to these earlier plans in the annual conventions. He therefore placed control of the new school in the hands of five lay trustees, although these five men must only be 'members' (though not necessarily communicants) of the Church under the charter. No written restriction appeared in the 'Fundamental Orders' of the school excluding clergymen as trustees.18 Reed's precedent in naming only laymen as the original trustees, however, has always been followed.19 The trustees appointed the faculty and named the advisory committee. This committee consisted of three laymen and three clergymen and, ex officio, the bishop of the diocese. Reporting Reed's gift of $100,000 'towards the establishment of a School of Divinity at Cambridge', Bishop Eastburn in his annual address to the diocese of 1867 made three points. First he pointed out that the management of the school was put into the hands of trustees who were 'to fill their own vacancies'. 20 Then he noted that Reed's gift was to be used 'exclusively' for the 'maintenance of the professors';
15. The Harvard Register, II, no. 5 (Nov. 1880), p. 222.
16. James Arthur Muller, The Episcopal Theological School, 1867-1943 (Cambridge 1943), p. 8.
17. Muller, ETS, p. 26.
18. Muller, ETS, p. 23, n. 2.
19. Of the five original trustees, three,
Edward S. Rand, Robert C. Winthrop, and John Phelps Putnam, were lawyers, while the two others were A. A. Lawrence, a commission merchant, and James Sulli- van Amory, a businessman. Muller, ETS, pp. 11-14.
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