USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 7
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15. JM, 1832, p. 22. 16. 'Suffolk Probate Records', vol. 131 (1), p. 555.
17. Boston Marriages, 1752-1809, p. 410.
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occupied the position of junior warden at Trinity Church, while Joseph Head filled that of senior warden.18 The diocesan conven- tion chose Foster for the standing committee in 1806, and re-elected him every year to 1817.19 About the year 1819, he moved from Boston to Cambridge, where he occupied the Lechmere-Sewall House, owned by Andrew Craigie. Foster's brother, Bossenger, who had married Elizabeth Craigie and after her death had mar- ried her sister, Mary, had lived in the Col. Henry Vassall House, which Andrew Craigie, brother of Elizabeth and Mary, had bought in 1792.20 Andrew Craigie and Joseph Foster attended Christ Church, Cambridge, while Foster served as a warden there in 1829-32, and from 1833 till his death in 1835.21 In 1832, when every unifying influence was needed on the standing committee, Foster, at the age of eighty-seven, once again (and for the twelfth time), was named to the standing committee.22 At the time of Fos- ter's death in 1835, his estate was inventoried at some $76,000, only $225 of which he left to the Episcopal Church.23 His occupa- tion appeared in the early Boston directories as 'merchant', with his office at 31 State Street.24 It is probable that he gave not only of his time but also financial aid during his lifetime, as he was a ves- tryman of Trinity for six years, a warden for eleven other years, and a warden of Christ Church, Cambridge, for five years.25 The ties of marriage appeared to be the dominant factor in allying Foster with the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Massachu- setts. To his step-son, William Davies Sohier, a Trinity vestryman, and for five years a member of the standing committee from 1838 to 1842, he gave the greater part of his estate, and made him executor and trustee of his property.26
18. Trinity Church, in the City of Boston, 1733-1933 (Boston, 1933), p. 205; Fred- erick C. Pierce, Pierce Genealogy (Chicago, 1899), p. 929; Middlesex County Probate Office, 'Will of Joseph Foster' (Docket No. 8238).
19. JM, years cited.
20. An Historic Guide to Cambridge, com- piled by ... D.A.R. (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 98, 107. Alfred Lee, first Bishop of Delaware, was born in the Lechmere-
Sewall House, 9 Sept. 1807, Ibid., p. 107.
21. Lucius R. Page, History of Cambridge . . 1630-1877 (Boston and Cambridge, 1877), p. 310.
22. JM, 1832, p. 10.
23. 'Foster Will'.
24. Boston Directories for 1798, 1809, 1816.
25. Trinity Church, p. 208; Page, Cam- bridge, p. 310.
26. 'Foster Will'.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Another merchant of Trinity parish was Joseph Head (1761- 1836). He served the diocese on the standing committee, 1812-17, and filled the positions of warden and vestryman at Trinity from 1791 to 1834.27 Son of a Joseph Head who was born in England, he early established himself as a merchant in State Street, with his residence in Common Street. 28 For a year or two he was a partner in a ship-owning firm, under the name of Head and Amory, at 45 State Street. 29 He was also a director of the Union Bank, in Bos- ton, in 1796, and subsequently appeared on the boards of directors, or was an officer of, the Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Co., the Massachusetts Bank, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Co.30 Head's contem- poraries, also directors and officers of these same institutions, were predominantly Unitarian or not permanently connected with any church. 31 The striking fact about the whole group is the amount of money they represented. The merchants predominated in the group; Head, with the others, was 'esteemed for intelligence and enterprise'. 32 The 'intelligence and enterprise' was revealed not so much in earning the money they had, but in investing and increas- ing it, without undue risk.
Head left an estate valued at about $136,000. He left his property to his wife, children, and grandchildren; at the time of his death his pew in Trinity Church, then on Summer Street, was worth
27. JM, years cited; Trinity Church, p. 205.
28. Clarence W. Bowen, The History of Woodstock, Conn., etc. (Norwood, Mass., 1930, 8 vols.), III, 345; Boston Directories, 1796, 1798.
29. Essex Institute Historical Collections, LXXI (April 1935), pp. 103, 186. Jonathan Amory was his partner.
30. List taken from Boston Directories for 1809, 1816, 1836.
31. In a list of fifty-one different names of the officers and directors of three of these corporations, thirteen were Unitar- ian: John Q. Adams, Samuel Appleton, Nathaniel Appleton, Peter C. Brooks, Ben- jamin Bussey, P. T. Jackson, Amos Law-
rence, John Lowell, Samuel Parkman, T. H. Perkins, John Phillips, Josiah Quincy, and Arnold Welles; nine were Episcopal- ian: Henry Codman, Stephen Codman, Benjamin Greene, Joseph Head, Samuel Hubbard, Jonathan Mason, Daniel P. Parker, Joseph Tilden, and Edward Tuck- erman, Jr .; David Sears started as Episco- pal, but formed his own sect. The other names belong in part to the Congrega- tional Church. See JM, 1809, 1816, 1836; Trinity Church; Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston . . . 1699-1872 (Bos- ton, 1902); Freeman Hunt, Lives of the Merchants, 1, 372 ff., etc.
32. Hunt, Merchant's Magazine, I (July 1839), 131.
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$750, and a tomb under Trinity, $400.33 About the time of Head's death in 1836, the debt of Trinity Church, incurred in building the new church, was some $32,000, but the market value of the pews indicated that by assessments, the pew owners could maintain the church financially, and that a large endowment was not a pressing need.34 The help that Head gave to his parish and diocese took the form of a lifelong interest and a sustaining financial responsibility. His son, Joseph Head, Jr., served on the building committee for Trinity in 1828, and appeared on the vestry concurrently with his father.35 In a few Boston families, whose immediate ancestors were English-born (as in the case of Joseph Head), the attachment to the Anglican Church before the Revolution, and to the Episcopal Church after the Revolution, represented an unstressed yet con- tinuing commitment which the children inherited as naturally as their surname.
Had Head been British-born as was James Anderton, in all like- lihood he would have established an Episcopal society at the Falls of the Sudbury River in the northeast corner of Framingham. This section of Framingham, known as Saxonville, had appeared a de- sirable site for a mill; as early as 1824, a Boston group had dug a canal and put up a mill for manufacturing woolen cloth.36 The next year, 1825, the Saxon factory combined with the Leicester factory where Anderton and others had established an Episcopal society in 1823. Then in 1829, Joseph Head and others, took over the mill site and were incorporated as the Saxon Cotton and Woolen Fac- tory. The Saxonville Religious Society had been incorporated in 1827, a meetinghouse built; 'Religious worship was at first con- ducted by ministers of the Unitarian denomination; and subse- quently for a time by the Methodists and others.'37 Head's interests in Saxonville were not minor. His real estate there, including twenty-three tenements, two shops, and a church totaled $10,800; while his Saxonville Factory stock was valued at $18,900.38 A re-
33. 'Suffolk County Probate Records', ham (Framingham, 1887), p. 357. Inventory of Head estate.
34. Trinity Church, p. 14.
35. Trinity Church, pp. 14, 206.
36. J. H. Temple, History of Framing-
37. Temple, Framingham, p. 368.
38. 'Suffolk Probate Records', Inven- tory of Head estate.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
ligious society being already organized at the mills was, though small, adequate for the needs of the 246 operatives,39 Unitarian, Congregational, or Methodist though it might be. Head, as a citi- zen of Boston, and a second generation Episcopalian, took religion, like good manners, for granted. The Episcopal societies of his day did not differ markedly from other Christian and Protestant so- cieties.
Following in the steps of Joseph Head was George Brinley (1774- 1857), a man whom the annual diocesan conventions elected to the standing committee ten times between 1818 and 1832.40 His uncle, Thomas Brinley, was a Mandamus Councillor, and the whole Brin- ley family early incurred the reputation of Loyalists.41 George Brinley, born in Boston, 'was for many years at the head of a large drug store in Boston, succeeding Dr. Dix, and laid the foundation of a large fortune'.42 In 1805 he married Catherine Putnam, a granddaughter of Gen. Israel Putnam, in Brooklyn, Connecticut. 43 Not only did he hold the positions of vestryman, and junior and senior warden of Trinity from 1818 to 1842, and serve on the build- ing committee in 1828; he was equally active in the diocese.44 In addition to his ten years on the standing committee, he represent- ed Jarvis in the latter's quarrel with St. Paul's in 1825.45 Earlier, he and Col. Putnam, of Brooklyn, Connecticut, had engaged 'in long and exciting litigations' with the Rev. George Savage White, a protégé of Bishop Griswold's. 46 With a group of friends, White had attempted without success to organize a parish in Boston ‘to ac- commodate that portion of the resident English in Boston, who were attached to the Church of their fathers . . . but who were not able to take pews in the old and more expensive churches'. 47
39. About three months after Head's death, the number of employees at the mills was 105 males, 141 females; capital invested was $415,000, and the cloth man- ufactured valued at $311,800. Temple, Framingham, p. 357.
40. JM, 1818, 1821-25, 1829-32.
41. James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (Boston, 1910), p. 396.
42. Eben Putnam, A History of the Put-
nam Family (Salem, 1891), p. 312. 43. Ibid.
44. Trinity Church, pp. 14, 206.
45. [Samuel F. Jarvis,] A Narrative of Events, etc. (n.p., n.d.), p. 102.
46. John Seely Stone, Memoir of Alex- ander Viets Griswold (Philadelphia, 1844), p. 263.
47. Ibid.
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Brinley's son, George, Jr., moved from Boston to Hartford when a young man, as he had developed 'a prejudice against Boston which persisted throughout his life'.48 That his father suffered from the Brinley "Tory' label was evident by his move to Hartford and also by the fact that he invested his money in real estate in Wor- cester and South Boston, rather than in Boston banks, trusts, or insurance companies.49 Brinley's churchmanship was not charac- teristic of the diocese, as he had acted for Jarvis in 1825, and was on Doane's side of the standing committee from 1830 to 1832.50
Other recurring names on the standing committee were those of Henry Codman (1789-1853) and his father Stephen Codman (1758-1844). Both men helped in the organization of St. Paul's, Boston. Stephen Codman served on the standing committee 1821- 23, while his son Henry, who practiced law in Boston, was elected annually from 1831 to 1837.51 He married Catherine Willard Amory, daughter of John Amory, who was her father's only heir and inherited a large fortune. Roxbury was the home of Lucius Manlius Sargent, and was likewise Mrs. Codman's home. When the young parish of St. James reported to the diocese through its rec- tor, M. A. DeWolfe Howe, in 1837, he noted that our liberal brethren of St. Paul's Church, Boston', had paid about half of a sum of $1100 in reduction of the parish debt. 52
Another lawyer to give five years of his time to the standing committee was William D. Sohier, son of Mrs. Joseph Foster by a previous marriage.53 The medical profession was represented on the standing committee for five years by John Collins Warren, 1826-30.54 As related above, the balance of the names on the stand- ing committee was made up largely of delegates representing Bos-
48. Randolph G. Adams, Three Ameri- canists, Henry Harrisse, George Brinley, Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 37 and n. 5.
49. Putnam, Putnam Family, p. 312; 'Suffolk Probate Records', Copy of Will of George Brinley. Brinley's estate was more than $140,000.
50. In 1833 Brinley was replaced in the position of senior warden at Trinity by
John T. Apthorp, and on the standing committee by Edward H. Robbins, Jr. Trinity Church, pp. 205, 206; JM, 1833, p. 14.
51. JM, years cited; New England His- torical and Genealogical Register, x (Janu- ary 1856), 64.
52. JM, 1837, p. 19.
53. JM, 1838-42. 54. JM, 1826-30.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
ton churches. The Greene family, connected by marriage with the Amorys, Copleys, Hubbards, and Perkinses, was represented on the standing committee by Gardiner Greene. 55 Samuel D. Parker, three years on the standing committee, descended from the second Bishop of Massachusetts and Trinity's rector, Samuel Parker. 56
In a very tangible way did the Greene family serve the Diocese of Massachusetts. In 1763 the children of Thomas Greene, carrying out their father's wish, set up a fund of £ 500 to be matched by an equal sum procured by the trustees, as 'a perpetual fund for sup- porting a Clergyman of the Church of England ... who is to be employed as a constant assistant to the Incumbent or stated Minis- ter of said [Trinity ] Church ... '.57 During the years of Dr. Gardi- ner's active rectorship, 1804-28, he felt no need of an assistant, and the fund accumulated.58 The treasurer of the fund, known as the Greene Foundation, for a period of thirty-four years (1797-1831) was Joseph Head. During his term of office the principal of the fund reached nearly $40,000, and the annual income more than $2100.59 In 1828 the income of the foundation paid the salary of the Rev. G. W. Doane, as assistant at Trinity, and with few inter- ruptions has supported an assistant ever since. The Greene Foun- dation did much to keep Trinity Church the leading church in the diocese, and the cause of the diocese advanced both because of, and in spite of, Trinity. 60
55. [Anon.,] The Greene Family in Eng- land and America with Pedigrees (Boston, 1901), passim; JM, 1814.
56. JM, 1826-28; William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit: Episcopalian (New York, 1859), V, 297.
57. The Greene Foundation . . . of Trinity Church, Boston (Boston, 1875), pp. 35-36.
58. Quincy, 'J. S. J. Gardiner', History of the Boston Athenaeum, p. 9.
59. Greene Foundation, p. 10.
60. Dissatisfaction with Trinity's serv- ices in part built St. Paul's Church. Ap- propriately enough, in 1844 the capital of the Greene fund was slightly in excess of $44,000. Greene Foundation, p. 33.
CHAPTER IX
HE standing committee represented the administrative and clerical personnel phases of diocesan affairs, but in the equally important field of financial matters, a corporation, not provided for by the constitution and canons of the Church, handled diocesan funds. With the election of Griswold in 1810, the need of money to sup- port him was obvious. The independent and congregational tone of the few parishes in the Eastern Diocese precluded any successful and regular voluntary contributions to an episcopal fund. To pro- vide for the bishop, then, the Diocese of Massachusetts appointed a committee, which applied for an incorporating act enabling the in- corporators to form an association, like any business, 'to receive and manage any and all funds, estates, and donations to the Epis- copal Church, for the support of a bishop, or any other purpose appertaining to the public worship and interests of said Church'.1 Originally only fifteen trustees were provided to manage this asso- ciation, known as the Trustees of Donations to the Protestant Episcopal Church.2 As annual dues or assessments were only five dollars, and the Episcopal clergy were exempt even from these dues, the incorporating act was amended in 1811 increasing the number of trustees to an unlimited amount.3 Three hundred and fifteen members were taken in during 1811, a definite majority of whom lived in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Bristol, Newport, and Providence, Rhode Island furnished the only other significant number of members. 4 The
1. Calvin R. Batchelder, History of the Eastern Diocese (Claremont and Boston, 1876-1910, 2 vols.), II, 173.
2. Abstract of the Records of the Trustees of Donations to the Protestant Episcopal
Church of the Diocese of Massachusetts (Bos- ton, 1870), p. 17.
3. Abstract, pp. 18, 24.
4. Abstract, pp. 179-184.
[73]
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
money-raising purpose of the society posed a problem from the be- ginning. The society paid Bishop Griswold $350 in 1811, and in 1812 voted $425 'towards the Bishop's salary', but at the end of that year, the treasurer was 'authorized and requested to pay the Rt. Rev. Alexander V. Griswold ... the sum of ($350) three hun- dred and fifty dollars'." Another difficulty of the trustees of dona- tions consisted in assembling a quorum for business. 6 Money finally came in for the bishop's fund, and for specific uses. In November 1815 the treasurer informed the managers that 'he had received, from an unknown hand, a liberal donation of three thousand dol- lars, to be added to the Bishop's fund .. . '. The board of managers then voted to invest this money 'in stock of the United States'.7 Then in 1830, as an evidence of his lifelong devotion to the Church, Dudley Atkins Tyng bequeathed $100 to the bishop's fund.8 At a meeting in 1842, Edward S. Rand, secretary, reported to the society that the bishop's fund amounted to $15,000, an amount in both principal and income 'altogether inadequate ... for the mainte- nance of the Episcopate'.9
Though otherwise of front rank in diocesan affairs, Edward A. Newton of Pittsfield did not belong to the society. Writing to the trustees in November, 1832, Newton offered the society his per- sonal bond of $4000, secured by mortgages on land in Pittsfield. The interest from the bond, or interest from a similar amount in- vested in Pittsfield real estate when the bond was paid up, was to be paid to St. Stephen's Church, Pittsfield, towards a total contingent salary for the minister of $500 a year.10 The board of managers, in February 1833, voted to accept the trust of E. A. Newton. When the board scanned the mortgages which Newton turned over to it,
5. Abstract, pp. 27-29.
6. Abstract, pp. 101, 104, 110, for in- stances. Much of the business of the trus- tees of donations involved the proving and confirming of lands granted to New Hamp- shire parishes, by either the act creating the township, or by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In Massachu- setts, Hopkinton glebe lands were the only prominent issue of this nature. Abstract,
passim.
7. Abstract, p. 40.
8. Abstract, p. 96.
9. Abstract, p. 127. Rand stated that the fund started in 1810 with $6000, an amount 'contributed by individuals for that pur- pose', but Rand did not name them. Ibid., p. 127.
10. Abstract, pp. 102-103.
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a committee was appointed to study them and report. The outcome of this study was set forth in a report of June 1834, refusing to ac- cept the Newton bond, as 'it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the officers of this Corporation and their successors, at such a dis- tance, to form any opinion of the sufficiency of mortgage securities, and of the titles of the mortgaged estates; and whereas, a frequent change of securities would, in the lapse of time, inevitably subject the funds to risk . . . '.11 Holding money in trust as did the trustees of donations, the board of managers invested it in the then safest holdings there were, banks, insurance companies, railroad stocks, and government securities.12 The membership of the society stood in the hundreds; it included most, if not all, of the prominent Epis- copal clergy of Boston, and the laymen belonging to their various parishes. A large membership did not imply, however, a corres- pondingly wide interest in the society. The officers and managers who did the work of the society, were those same Tyngs, Doanes, Eatons, Heads, Fosters, Greenes, Parkers, Brinleys, Codmans, and Howards, that did the work on the standing committees.13 The trustees of donations, by their own admission, never had adequate funds for the support of the bishop. The meetings of the board of managers, preceding the two fixed annual meetings of the trustees, often lacked a quorum.14 What the society did accomplish for the Diocese of Massachusetts through its few active members was to create an extra-parochial or diocesan institution, managed by the council of the leading clergymen together with the business and legal experience of a few laymen, which raised and invested money in the best ways known to conservative Boston businessmen. 15 That the financial figures were relatively small evidenced a general lack
11. Abstract, p. 107. The committee on the Newton trust was W. D. Sohier of Trinity, Boston, and Henry Codman and James Merrill of St. Paul's.
12. Abstract, pp. 116, 166. In 1847 Wil- liam Appleton transferred 100 shares ($10,000) of Pittsfield & North Adams Railroad stock to the society, 'the payment of interest of which is guaranteed by the Western Rail Road corporation', for the
benefit of the Episcopal City Mission. Ibid., p. 139.
13. Abstract, pp. 178-184.
14. Abstract, p. 127, and passim.
15. Real estate was, for some reason, less highly regarded than bank and insur- ance stocks for investment, yet the inven- tories of the estates of certain churchmen, George Brinley, for example, revealed valuable holdings of land and buildings.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
of interest combined with the pervasive parochialism of many churchmen. It was hardly likely that church politics, i.e., High or Low Churchmanship, affected the running of the trustees of dona- tions, as all its members agreed that the financial support of the episcopate (were the bishop of the evangelical or of the high party) was necessary for the existence of the Church.
Where faction or party did intrude was in the attempts of the diocese, both alone and in conjunction with the Eastern Diocese, to organize an Episcopal school of theology. Bishop Griswold had frequently set forth the need for a school in his reports to the East- ern Diocese. As the leading member of the Eastern Diocese, Massa- chusetts wanted the school to be located within the state. Hopkins, backed by Doane, started a purely diocesan school in 1831, but owing to the factional crisis of 1830-32, he could not secure the pledge of $10,000 'as the lowest [sum] which he could regard as proof of a serious determination to make the Seminary a reality'.16 The best that the vestry of Trinity Church would do was to raise by subscription a small trust fund, from which 'a few hundred dol- lars of income' would pay Hopkins as 'Professor of Systematic Theology, so long as . . . [he ] should fill that chair'. 17 The few Ho- bart priests and churchmen in the diocese maintained the opinion that the General Seminary of the Church, in New York City, of- fered the best training for candidates for the ministry. By 1836, however, the Massachusetts convention, spurred on by a pledge of $25,000 from the Diocese of Rhode Island, canvassed the conven- tion for pledges for the projected 'Episcopal Theological Seminary' in Massachusetts.18 The result of the canvass were pledges by eighteen churches, over a five-year period, of $38,750. In addition to this sum, the convention further assumed the responsibility of raising $25,000.19 Of the $38,750 pledged by churches in the con - vention, St. Paul's and Grace Churches, Boston, pledged $27,500
16. [John Henry Hopkins, Jr.,] The Life of the Late Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins (New York, 1873 [1872]), pp. 143, 144.
17. [Hopkins,] Hopkins, p. 144.
18. The Diocese of Rhode Island
pledged $25,000 over a ten-year period for an endowed professorship. JM, 1836, p. 50.
19. JM, 1836, p. 53.
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while Trinity and Christ Churches pledged nothing. 20 Wainwright, Trinity's rector, inclined toward High Church views. Croswell at Christ Church, on Doane's side in 1832, held Doane as a close friend. Thus both men would not abandon their exclusive support of General Theological Seminary.21 The less favorable business conditions of 1837 influenced the convention of that year tempo- rarily to drop the idea of the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. 22 Not until ten years later, in 1846, under Bishop Eastburn, did the subject of a divinity school again occupy the convention. The pledges made in 1836, though not paid, yielded evidence of the stability of the churches in Salem and Newbury- port, of the permanence of the parish in Lowell, and of the re- sources of the infant parish in Pittsfield.
Grace Church, Boston, admitted into union with the diocesan convention of 1830, pledging second to St. Paul's, revealed some aspects of clerical and lay activities and resources in the diocese which help to fill in the picture of the Church in Massachusetts during the last decade of Bishop Griswold's episcopate, and of Manton Eastburn's first years as bishop. The origin of Grace Church centered in the person of an English Dissenting minister, James Sabine. Sabine emigrated from England to Newfoundland in 1816.23 From thence with his wife and eight children he came to Boston in 1818, where he started the Essex Street Church. 24 About ten years
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