USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 9
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78. JM, 1843, pp. 90-91. The exact fig- ure was $10,496.31. Of this total, Trinity, St. Paul's, and Grace Churches of Boston contributed $7,485.63. Ibid., p. 91.
79. JM, 1843, pp. 52-53.
80. JED, 1838, p. 29.
81. JED, 1839, pp. 9-10; 1841, p. 15. 82. JED, 1841, pp. 15-16. Bishop Gris- wold's exchange of letters with the com- mittee appointed by wardens and vestry of Trinity, Nantucket, are partially printed in Stone, Griswold, pp. 437-445.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
altar, with the many possibilities of beautifying it, held the wor- shipper's attention at the middle or focal point of the church. The significance of this discussion lay in the fact that the typical and conventional design of the meetinghouse, on the inside especially, was still regarded as most suitable and usual for the services of the Episcopal Church. Any change in the traditional New England meetinghouse pattern, with reading desk or pulpit dominant, said Griswold, would be 'the absurdity of going back to the dark ages of Christianity for the models of our churches, or for the manner of worshipping in them .. . '.83 Christ Church, Boston, together with the Episcopal churches at Cambridge, Marblehead, and Newbury- port represented buildings of the traditional type of an earlier gen- eration than Griswold's, but he dedicated churches at Hanover and Newton Lower Falls that reproduced or matched the earlier mod- els. 'Let us not look back to Egypt, lest we perish in the wilderness', Griswold warned the Massachusetts diocese.84 The tendency to such 'bondage', native to the Church in New York, came into Mas- sachusetts from that diocese. It appeared to Griswold as a threat to the existence of the Diocese of Massachusetts from within the Church. The diocese did not recognize the bishop's complaint about Nantucket in its conventions. In 1842, however, the report of the Board of Missions stated that Nantucket's parish was one of five which 'may with the greatest certainty produce widely extend- ed results'. 85
Outside the church, and, in the opinion of Bishop Griswold, "almost peculiar to this Diocese [i.e., the Eastern Diocese, but he might well have specified the Diocese of Massachusetts], was the continuing threat of Unitarianism'. Unitarianism obstructed the growth of the Episcopal Church both financially and numerically, Bishop Griswold felt. 86 This note of anxiety arose from criticism of
83. JED, 1841, p. 15. For a detailed de- scription of the usual interior arrangement of Episcopal churches (which followed the earlier pattern of the Congregational churches) see W. W. Manross, The Episco- pal Church in the U. S., 1800-1840 (New York, 1938), p. 147.
84. JED, 1841, p. 16.
85. JM, 1842, p. 17. The other four mis- sionary parishes were at Andover, Charles- town, Fall River, and Springfield. Ibid., pp. 16-17.
86. JED, 1837, p. 13.
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the length of the Episcopal service on Sundays which dated from the early ministry of Jarvis at St. Paul's. 87 With no fixed form of worship or liturgy, the Unitarian and Orthodox parishes could time their services to suit the congregations. To the diocese as a whole, Unitarianism was a great threat. Yet there were marked similarities between Episcopalians and Unitarians. Both groups were politically conservative, believed in humanitarian and philan- thropic organizations, and socially were friendly to the point of in- termarriage.88 The Unitarians were more socially prominent in Massachusetts, and more in the tradition of the ‘established' church in Massachusetts. A case in point was Medford. In Med- ford's one parish, the Rev. Samuel Osgood, from his ordination in 1774, had not only abandoned the Calvinism of the Puritans, but had led the large majority of his flock 'quietly' to align themselves with the Unitarians. 89 One of this Unitarian majority in the parish was Peter Chardon Brooks. A few years later in Boston, he stood in loco parentis' to a recently married pair, the parents-to-be of Phillips Brooks.90 Individuals and families became members of the Unitarian Church more by liberality, progress, open-mindedness, than by predetermined thought and action. 91 The case of the First Church in Medford was only one instance of the changes which
87. [Samuel F. Jarvis,] A Narrative of Work of Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham Events, etc. (n.p., n.d.), pp. 30, 77-78, 79 n. (New York and London, 1890), passim. Early Unitarian humanitarian societies were the Boston Port Society, 1829, and the Seamen's Aid Society, 1832. Frothing- ham, Unitarianism, pp. 65-66. R. H. Dana, III, Episcopal, married Edith Long- fellow, Unitarian, in Appleton Chapel, 10 Jan. 1878. The couple chose as officiating clergymen 'Dr. Andrew P. Peabody of Harvard and Father Grafton of the Church of the Advent . . . '. Bliss Perry, R. H. Dana, III (Boston and New York, 1933), p. 101. That the length of Morning Prayer was 'an impediment to the increase of our Church, and hurtful to its true interests', appeared in a petition submitted to general conven- tion meeting in New York City in 1832. This petition, introduced by the Rev. Mr. Stone, rector of St. Paul's, Boston, and "signed by a large number of the members of the Episcopal Churches and Congrega- tions in Boston and its vicinity, of great respectability', received the attention of a joint committee of both houses. The whole subject was dismissed, ostensibly for lack 89. Charles Brooks, History of the Town of Medford (Boston, 1855), pp. 237, 246- 248. of time, 'for a full and proper considera- tion' of it. JGC, 1832, pp. 53-54, 64-65, 89-90; JED, 1833, pp. 13-14.
88. O. B. Frothingham, Boston Unitari- anism, 1820-1850, A Study of the Life and
90. A. V. G. Allen, Phillips Brooks (New York, 1900, 2 vols.), I, 26-29.
91. Brooks, Medford, p. 248.
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had been, and were occurring in towns throughout the Common- wealth. 92 Unitarianism within ten miles of Boston certainly chal- lenged the Episcopal Church by reason of the former's great pre- dominance. An appraisal of 'Episcopacy' in the Boston of the early 1820s by a Unitarian of a later generation characterized it as 'fash- ionable but feeble'.93 Feeble in numbers, both of members and clergymen, it surely was. At the same time (1821), the Unitarians were gaining, but not so much did they gain from converts of no religion as they did from the conversions of majority or even mi- nority groups from the Orthodox Congregational Church. 94 Bishop Griswold feared the unconstrainedness of the Unitarian form of worship, which could always be made to match the desires of its congregations, as to length at least. Lyman Beecher noted the gain- ing strength of the Unitarians and assigned the cause to Harvard. He said, in 1821, 'Their [the Unitarians'] power of corrupting the youth of the commonwealth by means of Cambridge is silently put- ting sentinels in all the churches, legislators in the hall, and judges on the bench, and scattering every where physicians, lawyers, and merchants'.95 Bishop Griswold could look at Harvard and show
92. Henry Adams' account of the Unitar- ian reformation and the Orthodox coun- ter-reformation in Massachusetts noted the familiar landmarks of the controversy : Henry Ware's appointment as Hollis Pro- fessor of Theology at Harvard (1805), the establishment of a theological seminary at Andover (1807), and Channing's Balti- more Sermon (1819). Henry Adams, His- tory of the United States (New York, 1891), I, 176-177. See also Abiel Abbot, History of Andover (Andover, 1829), pp. 119-123.
93. Frothingham, Unitarianism, p. 48. This designation of the Episcopal Church was written about 1890 when Phillips Brooks had been Trinity's rector for twenty years. A characterization of the Unitarians around Boston, in 1826, written by an Or- thodox Churchman (Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe) about 1865, said: 'All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarian, all the trustees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarians. All the elite of
wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of [Orthodox] church or- ganization . . . had been nullified.' Charles Beecher, ed., Autobiography, Correspond- ence, etc. of Lyman Beecher, D.D. (New York, 1865), II, 110. The English traveler, Buckingham, wrote in 1841 that, 'the Uni- tarians have a greater number of churches than any other single sect; their preachers are more eminent for learning and elo- quence; and their congregations embrace nearly all the most wealthy and influential families of the City . . . '. He found that the Episcopalians, 'in respect to the opulence and station of their adherents ... come next to the Unitarians'. J. S. Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descrip- tive (London, 3 vols. [1841]), III, 343-344. 94. Frothingham, Unitarianism, p. 227. 95. Beecher, Beecher, I, 449.
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that only Brown University, however, furnished more graduates whom he ordained to holy orders than the university at Cam- bridge. 96 The real threat to both Episcopalians and Unitarians was the indifference to, and the unreality of, any religion among per- sons whose ability, both intellectual as well as financial, could have given a ministry to the churches, and means to support them. Henry Adams, looking at the period of the 1830s, said, " ... neither to him [self] nor to his brothers and sisters was religion real. Even the mild discipline of the Unitarian Church was so irksome that they all threw it off at the first possible moment, and never after- ward entered a church.'97 Bishop Griswold met this unconcerned- ness with religion by preaching in season and out of season. The Diocese of Massachusetts owed everything but its bare survival to the singleness of purpose and the ability to promote good will, which were the strengths of Griswold's character.98 His reason- able, evangelical conception of the Christian Church, and his rôle in it, promoted the cause of the Episcopal Church in Massachu- setts, despite the efforts and resources of the 'reformed' Orthodox Church, or of the Unitarians, or of the generality who were marked with 'the want of pious zeal and of the increase of faith and love'.99
Minutely scanning the member states of the Eastern Diocese as he did, Bishop Griswold proposed in 1837, that the Massachusetts convention elect an assistant [bishop] for that state'.100 Such an election would mean that at Bishop Griswold's death (he was then in his 72nd year) the assistant would become bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts. What the Eastern Diocese did was to call a spe- cial meeting of the diocese for 10 January 1838, at St. Paul's, Bos- ton. 101 Immediately groups of clergy and laity in Massachusetts
96. Of 141 college graduates ordained by Bishop Griswold, 36 were Brown, 32 Harvard, 12 Dartmouth, 10 Yale, etc. Batchelder, Eastern Diocese, II, 388-394.
97. [Adams,] The Education of Henry Adams (Boston and New York, 1918), p. 34.
98. Griswold may be rightly credited with keeping the Massachusetts Diocesan Conference of 1832 from fatally injuring the diocese. He gave important help, also,
to the parishes of Salem, Marblehead, and Grace Church, Boston. His influence on Edson and T. M. Clark was notable.
99. JED, 1837, p. 13.
100. JED, 1837, pp. 14-15.
101. The Massachusetts members of the committee which called for the special ses- sion of the diocese were the Rev. T. Ed- son, of Lowell, and Samuel Cutler, Esq., of St. Paul's, Boston. The special session
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challenged the right of the Eastern Diocese to elect a bishop. 102 The opposition centered in Trinity Church, Boston.
Boston held the focal place in the Eastern Diocese geographi- cally and financially. Boston, too, 'was the place ... where the main strength of the Diocese lay, and at which he [Bishop Griswold] might most readily gather round himself all needful influences of counsel and co-operation in his labors'.103 The clergy and laymen near Boston urged, therefore, the settling of Bishop Griswold in or near Boston as early as 1813. It was not until 1829, however, that the bishop left Bristol, Rhode Island, and became rector of St. Peter's, Salem.104 The Diocese of Massachusetts was solidly be- hind this move. Two years later, in 1831, the Massachusetts con- vention considered the question of withdrawing from the Eastern Diocese and 'having a Bishop exclusively to itself'.105 To this pro- posal Bishop Griswold, through the Eastern Diocese, agreed; he also approved whatever the convention should decide as to its own dissolution. In the convention of the Eastern Diocese in 1835, Bishop Griswold urged that each state (especially Maine and New Hamp- shire) have its own diocesan, and the convention passed a resolu- tion stating that 'it is expedient to dissolve the Eastern Diocese'. 106 Before the convention of 1836 met, Bishop White had died (17 July 1836), and Bishop Griswold had automatically become pre- siding bishop. No action for dissolution occurred at the convention
was actually to be an adjourned session of the convention, by virtue of a resolution passed in the closing moments of the regu- lar convention. JED, 1837, pp. 16, 19, 20. 102. [Jonathan M. Wainwright,] Con- siderations on the Eastern Diocese, By a Presbyter of the Diocese of Massachusetts (Boston, 1837); Protest of the Laity of Trin- ity Church in the City of Boston Against the Election of any Assistant Bishop for the East- ern Diocese (Boston, 1838). Defending the right of the Eastern Diocese to elect an assistant bishop was [Mark A. DeW. Howe], The Right of the Eastern Diocese to Elect an Assistant Bishop (Cambridge, 1838).
103. Stone, Griswold, p. 211.
104. Griswold was called to St. Peter's in 1813, but declined. So disappointed were the spokesmen (headed by Joseph Story, later Judge of the U. S. Supreme Court) for St. Peter's that they feared, 'the entire dispersion of the parish, or its seces- sion from the Diocese' to a church that could supply it with a trained minister. Stone, Griswold, pp. 211-214, 346-347.
105. JM, 1831, pp. 12, 17-18. E. A. Newton of Pittsfield introduced the subject of withdrawal at the annual convention, held at St. Paul's, Boston.
106. JED, 1831, p. 26; 1835, pp. 4, 7, 17-18. Vermont, as noted above, withdrew from the Eastern Diocese in 1832.
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of 1836. Thus far the Trinity Church, Boston, delegates to the Eastern Diocese went along with, and voted for, the decisions of the Eastern Diocese.107 When the question of episcopal election came up in 1837, seven of the Massachusetts clergy present voted against the choosing of an assistant bishop by a convention of the Eastern Diocese.108 Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, rector of Trin- ity, Boston, and his assistant minister, John L. Watson, opposed the action of the Eastern Diocese. Shortly after the fall convention, laymen of Trinity Church published a protest which claimed for the Diocese of Massachusetts the exclusive right to elect an assis- tant bishop who would automatically succeed as bishop at Gris- wold's death. The protest added that 'independently and for her- self' the Church in Massachusetts elected Griswold to be her bish- op. The pamphlet asserted a home-rule attitude toward the East- ern Diocese, an attitude that could be felt in the Eastern Diocese, by reason of the weight and importance of the Massachusetts diocese. 109
Trinity, of course, did not send delegates to the special session of the Eastern Diocese. The two-day session at St. Paul's, Boston, proceeded to the nomination after a formal protest by the vener- able rectors of Newton and Lowell, Edson and Baury.110 Of the four men for whom the clerical delegates cast their ballots, two were former rectors of St. Paul's, Boston, the Rev. S. F. Jarvis, and the Rev. Alonzo Potter. The third man was the then rector of St. Paul's, the Rev. J. S. Stone.111 Stone had withdrawn his name as a candidate, and at his request the clergy balloted a second time,
107. JED, 1836, pp. 14-16.
108. Thirteen Massachusetts clergymen, including the Rev. J. S. Stone, St. Paul's, Boston, voted in favor of the Eastern Dio- cese convention. Among the seven voting against were the Rev. T. M. Clark of Grace, and the Revs. Wainwright and Watson of Trinity, Boston. JED, 1837, pp. 19-20.
109. Laymen of Trinity, Protest, pp. 4, 6-7, 15. The Protest closed by stating that no clerical or lay delegates would attend the special Eastern Diocese convention, as
it would be uncanonical.
110. A third cleric joined Edson and Baury, the Rev. Daniel L. B. Goodwin, rector of St. John's, Wilkinsonville, in signing a recorded protest. JED, Jan. 1838, p. 14.
111. JED, Jan. 1838, p. 16. The fourth name to receive a vote was that of the Rev. Henry J. Whitehouse, of St. Luke's, Roch- ester, New York. On the first ballot the vote was: Potter 21, Stone 14, Jarvis 1, Whitehouse 1.
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which ballot gave all the votes to Potter. Thirty-four of the thirty- five lay votes concurred in naming Potter.112 Potter's nomination showed at once how far in the background were the elements of party strife of 1831-32. It also revealed that no clergymen of the Eastern Diocese appeared to be of episcopal timber.113 Two months later, in March 1838, Bishop Griswold, implementing the wishes of the convention, designated the Diocese of Massachusetts as the diocese to consider the election of an assistant bishop.114
At the annual convention of the Diocese of Massachusetts in June 1838, on the first ballot Potter received twenty of the twenty- five votes cast by the clergy, and the unanimous lay vote. 115 Bishop Griswold 'then declared the Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D., to be chosen Assistant Bishop of the . . . Church in Massachusetts'. 116 The dé- nouement came next year when the committee named to advise Dr. Potter of his election reported to the annual convention of 1839 'that Dr. Potter found himself obliged to decline the appoint- ment'.117 Bishop Griswold continued to plead for an assistant bish- op, but as Maine and New Hampshire had withdrawn from the Eastern Diocese by 1839, he left the matter with the several states which had composed and after 1839, did compose, the Eastern Diocese.118 Finally, in August 1842, Bishop Griswold, acting 'un- der the advice of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Massa- chusetts', circularized the clergy and churches of the diocese, call-
112. Of the forty-seven clerical dele- gates, only thirty-one voted on the second ballot. Stone of St. Paul's subsequently re- marked, 'The gentleman, nominated for election by State Convention, was the Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D., upon whom, in any important question, it was easy to unite the main strength of the Diocese.' Stone, Griswold, p. 409.
113. Three of the clergy present from Massachusetts subsequently were elected bishops : T. M. Clark, T. H. Vail, and M. A. DeW. Howe, Living Church Annual, 1951 (New York, Morehouse-Gorham), p. 358.
114. JM, 1838, pp. 47-48.
115. JM, 1838, p. 62. There was one
vote for Stone and four blanks.
116. Two recorded protests were made by the Rev. Mark Howe, and the Rev. Thomas H. Vail; it was contended by these two men, afterwards bishops, that the Dio- cese of Massachusetts, while still a member of the Eastern Diocese, could not canoni- cally elect its own bishop. JM, 1838, pp. 63-64.
117. JM, 1839, p. 55. As early as July 1838 Potter had indicated his refusal of the office of Bishop of Massachusetts. M. A. De Wolfe Howe, D.D., Memoirs . . . of the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter, etc. (Philadelphia, 1871), pp. 82-83.
118. JED, 1839, pp. 5, 15; 1840, p. 24; 1841, p. 23.
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ing for a special meeting of the convention for 27 September at Trinity, Boston.119 This body did not consider Potter again, as, forewarned, Potter "had felt it his duty to repress the movement '.120 Voting by orders, the clergy cast thirty-nine votes, all for the Rev. Manton Eastburn, D.D., of New York. The lay delegates, representing thirty-one churches, likewise gave all their votes to Eastburn, as 'Assistant Bishop of the Diocese'.121 The committee to inform the Rev. Manton Eastburn of his unanimous election con- sisted of the Rev. Alexander H. Vinton, St. Paul's, and the Rev. John L. Watson, Trinity, Boston, Charles R. Codman, senior warden of Trinity, and William Appleton.122 Manton Eastburn re- ceived the laying on of hands in Trinity Church, Boston, on 29 December 1842, the consecrators being Bishops Griswold, Brow- nell, B. T. Onderdonk, and DeLancey.123 In order to provide a suitable salary for the new assistant bishop, Trinity, Boston, elect- ed him its rector on 9 October 1842.124 Bishop Griswold died 15 February 1843, less than seven weeks after his assistant's conse- cration.
119. JM, Sept. 1842, p. 6.
120. Howe, Potter, p. 98. William Ap- pleton was a warm friend of Potter's and kept him advised of diocesan affairs.
121. JM, Sept. 1842, p. 20.
122. JM, Sept. 1842, p. 25. 123. Living Church Annual, 1951, p. 356.
124. Trinity Church, p. 56.
CHAPTER X
T the annual diocesan convention of 1843, Bishop Eastburn included in his address the record of Bishop Griswold's last of- ficial acts, from 19 June 1842 until his death, for the churches in Massachusetts. Bishop Eastburn planned 'an entire Visitation of the Diocese', to start about 1 July 1843.1 What was the over-all aspect of the Church in Massachusetts at this time?
In what proved to be his last report on the churches in Massa- chusetts, Bishop Griswold during the year between the annual conventions of the Eastern Diocese, from September 1841 to Sep- tember 1842, visited all the churches in Massachusetts, 'where we have ministers, with the exception of Ashfield .. . '.2 Most of the traveling the bishop did was by stagecoach or horseback. Begin- ning in the summer of 1835, the railroad provided transportation from Boston to Lowell and from Boston to Worcester. It was not until 1841, however, that the Boston to Albany run was opened. 3 The first mention of railroad travel in Griswold's journal or corre- spondence was in a letter to his wife written from Pittsfield on 25 August 1842, after he 'took the railroad cars' to that place from Westfield.4 The bishop made two observations on this journey. "The scenery', which he noted and never tired of commenting upon, 'through the mountains to Pittsfield is awfully sublime.' Then he added, 'So much money has been expended in cutting through rocks, making bridges, etc., that the stockholders will not soon, if ever, be remunerated.'5
1. JM, 1843, pp. 19-25.
2. The year between conventions was 29 Sept. 1841 to 28 Sept. 1842. JED, 1841, p. 7; 1842, p. 10.
3. Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1881), IV, 128-
129, 138.
4. The letter is quoted in John Seely Stone, Memoir of Alexander Viets Griswold (Philadelphia, 1884), p. 506.
5. Quoted in Stone, Griswold, p. 506. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., noted the
[97]
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In Berkshire County, St. Stephen's, Pittsfield, was widely known in the diocese because of its prominent lay member, Edward Au- gustus Newton, who by reason of his interest in missions and theo- logical education, received recognition as well in the General Con- vention. By no means, though, was religion acted upon lightly in Berkshire County. As the candidates for confirmation were few, Bishop Griswold remarked that 'well may the minister of Christ address them in the words of a prophet, "How long halt ye between two opinions." "6 The parishes were in a 'state of self-isolation', and evidenced no interest in the diocese.7 Of the important indus- tries of Berkshire County, the woolen, cotton, and iron manufac- tures were centered at Great Barrington and Pittsfield, which towns were also centers of a sustained though limited interest in the Episcopal form of worship. Although in the case of Pittsfield an English immigrant began the manufacture of broadcloth, the in- dustries in western Massachusetts did not draw English operatives or even local hands in numbers comparable to the more eastern parts of the state. 8
East of Berkshire were, from north to south, Franklin, Hamp-
'track painfully built through the Berk- shire Hills ... at an average rate of twenty miles a year .. . '. Winsor, Boston, IV, 135.
6. JED, 1842, p. 18. The parishes in Berkshire were at Pittsfield, Great Barring- ton, Lenox, Stockbridge, Van Deusenville (a section of Great Barrington), Otis, and Lanesborough. JM, 1842, p. 70. The Epis- copal Chapel, Trinity, at Van Deusenville was built in 1829 by Isaac L. Van Deusen, who also built a woolen mill here in 1822- 23, and a cotton goods mill in 1828. Charles J. Taylor, History of Great Barrington, (Berkshire County), Massachusetts (Great Barrington, 1882), pp. 411-414.
7. An example of Berkshire parishes was St. Luke's, Lanesborough. It was blessed with the services of one rector, Samuel B. Shaw, for thirty-four years and was the largest parish west of Worcester County, but the parish never grew. Batchelder, East- tern Diocese, II, 84-85. The remoteness of
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