USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Great Barrington > St. James' Parish, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1762-1962 > Part 4
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they acquire of it, which gives me reason to hope that it will not be long before many of them will become entirely reconciled to it. There ap- pears likewise a favorable prospect of an increase to the Church in the several other parts of the mission, and those who are already professors of the Church appear zealous in their attendance, and behave with de- cency and good order, which encourages me to hope that by the bless-
. ing of God my labours may not prove in vain, but that the good inten- tions of the Venerable Society in placing me here, will be in some measure answered, which I am sensible will afford them no less satis- faction than it will him, who with the utmost gratitude has the honor to be
Rev'd Sir
Your much obliged very humble servant Gideon Bostwick.
In his next letter to Burton in London, dated March 25, 1771, Bost- wick describes his ministry in the following paragraph:
I divide my time among the several parishes in the following manner ( viz.): I preach at Great Barrington where I reside 20 Sundays in the year, at Lanesboro' and Nobletown 12 each, and at New Concord 8 -- which obliges me to ride a vast deal (more perhaps by considerable than any one Missionary in America). But I thank God that thro' the strength of a good constitution, and the pleasing prospect of being the instru- ment of some good to my fellow creatures I am enabled cheerfully to perform it.
At other times Bostwick roamed widely over adjacent areas, minis- tering to scattered settlements in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. Travelling by horseback, he rode the wilderness trails in winter cold and summer heat, through snow and rain and fair weather to bring his Church to some forty frontier communities (4). In the twenty- three years of his ministry he accomplished a prodigious mission, bap- tising 2274 children and 81 adults, marrying 27 couples and burying 84 persons.
Gideon Bostwick preached in Great Barrington for the last time on June 2, 1793, for not long after, on returning from a Diocesan meeting in Middletown, Connecticut, he was taken ill and died in New Milford at the age of 50 years. Reputed to have been a genial, friendly and affable man, Bostwick had been held in great affection and esteem by his con- gregations and his loss was keenly felt. His body was returned to Great Barrington and buried in the Mahaiwe cemetery, not far from his church.
The writer of this narrative now digresses from authentic fact to moot speculation. To him it seems probable that in its name St. James', our church is a memorial to the indefatigable and beloved Gideon Bost- wick. There is evidence that during his tenure the wood-and-glass struc- ture built in 1763-4 was called "Christ Church". In his paper on early church records, L. H. von Sahler asserts this as fact, but gives no supporting evidence. Nowhere in the early parish records do either of the names "Christ Church" or "St. James' Church" appear; it was habitually "The Protestant Episcopal Society of Great Barrington" from 1791, and earlier. the "Church of England" or the "Episcopal Society". But a pamphlet print- ed in Providence, early in 1765, titled A Sermon preached at the opening of Christ's Church in Great Barrington on Christmas Day, MDCCLXIV, by Thomas Davies, A.M., and Missionary from the Society", lends sup- port to the thesis. Further, in a letter to the "Venerable Society" (the
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S. P. G., or "Propagation Society") dated from Symsbury (sic) June 23, 1764, Roger Viets, missionary, wrote in part:
The good people of Great Barrington have now raised the frame of their church, which, though not large, yet, on account of its architecture, beauty, expense and regularity, would be reckoned no mean country church, even in England. It is 50 feet by 40, with a front gallery, a beautiful chancel, and a steeple about 115 feet high. It is named Christ Church in Great Barrington. There are in my possession 4 deeds, from some good people of Great Barrington, to the Society, in trust, for the use of their church, which I will carefully transmit by the first good and safe opportunity. I conjecture that these lands amount to about the value of £ 100 sterling, and may rent at about £4 per annum.
Finally, the parish register for St. Andrew's Church in Simsbury, Connecticut, contains the entry, in Viets' own handwriting, "At Christ Chh Great Barrington", relating to baptisms he performed as missionary on January 19, 1766. It is reasonable to assume that its name derived from its having been modeled upon the earlier structure, Christ Church in Strat- ford, Connecticut, built in 1743.
Under the leadership of Gideon Bostwick, Christ Church in Great Barrington survived the Revolution, which elsewhere in New England brought the Anglican Church to the very edge of extinction. It is there- fore also reasonable to assume that those parishioners who maintained their allegiance to the Church during the dark days of the Revolution, resolved to honor the memory of their loyal priest who preserved their church from the Anglophobia of the times. This they could do by taking for the name of their church, the name of that chapel in London, St. James', in which Gideon Bostwick had been ordained.
The earliest evidence we have of that new name occurs in a docu- ment in the parish archives dated May 20, 1804 (and quoted later in this chapter), when the Rev. Bethel Judd was infusing new energy into the Society and shaping its future; and it is probable that he was instru- mental in its adoption of the new designation. The name next occurs in a receipt for money paid to Samuel Griswold on December 12, 1805, in which he appends to his signature the title "Rector of St. James' Church, Great Barrington." It was formalized on October 18, 1823, when the Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, Alexander Viets Griswold, consecrated the "said house by the name of St. James' Church".
As a final argument, it may be noted that there seems no other rea- son to adopt the name "St. James'", for that day in the church calendar which honors the Saint, July 25, up to this period in the church's history bore no recorded significance in the life of the parish. Perhaps future his- torians may adduce evidence to support or demolish this theory; mean- while, the facts now at hand lend it considerable credence.
II
Gideon Bostwick had assumed his ministry on the eve of the Revo- lution, in 1770, and he remained at Christ Church through those turbulent times and into the establishment of the free and independent United States. In common with many members of the Anglican Church who because of their ties with England failed actively to support the rebellion or overtly sympathized with the mother country. he was named in July of 1776 in a
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warning issued by the Committee of Safety to those who refused to sign the "Test Bill", which was an agreement not to consume British goods. And when he had occasion to visit New York City on business in 1780, he was required to obtain the consent of the town fathers, which was given on the condition that he obtain a passport from the provincial governor.
Bostwick's difficulties exemplified the tribulations afflicting the Anglican clergy and laity in colonial New England, who were forced to choose between loyalty to their mother country and devotion to their in- fant nation in the New World. The clergy particularly were subject to a moral dichotomy; upon their ordination in England they had pledged alle- giance to the British Crown and convenanted to include in their services a prayer for the British royal family, yet they felt an obligation to their pa- rishioners and to the emerging nation which promised a new era of free- dom and progress. In the crucible of war they divided about equally in their loyalties, for it is estimated that half the Anglican clergy left New England°, and in Massachusetts of the twelve clergymen functioning in 1776 only three were active by the end of the Revolution. They were Gideon Bostwick at Christ Church, Great Barrington, and St. Luke's, Lanes- borough; Samuel Parker at Trinity Church, Boston; and Edward Bass at St. Paul's, Newburyport. The latter two men rose to become Bishop.
Those of the New England clergy who still occupied their parishes had achieved an accommodation; they eliminated the prayer for the royal family but otherwise retained the form, substance and ritual of the Angli- can Church, even as their predecessors of two centuries before had retained what was best of the medieval Latin Church when they rejected papal supremacy. By compromising their oath of allegiance in this manner they enabled the Anglican Church to survive, and so successfully that even Sam Adams, that ardent and extreme patriot of the Revolution, maintained a high regard for its members.
The laity, too, were forced to choose; one-third of the Anglicans in New England in 1776 are said to have fled to England or, as United Empire Loyalists, to Canada, where they were in large part the settlers of what became Upper Canada. In Great Barrington a considerable body of men, some well-to-do and some influenced by religious proclivities, were slow to adopt revolutionary measures and refused to sign the "Test Bill", To quiet the indignation of the partisans of the Revolution and to prevent violence, the Committee of Safety served individually upon them the fol- lowing warning:
To Coonrod Van Deusen, Abraham Van Deusen, Isaac Van Deusen, Jun'r., John Van Deusen, Jacob Van Deusen, Samuel Fowler, Barnabas Scott, Martin Remelee, John Hickok, Asa Brown, Lambert Burghardt, Peter Sharp, Coonrod Sharp, Caleb Hill, Hendrick Perry, Peter Burghardt ye second, Abraham Burghardt, Coonrod Burghardt, Jun'r, Nathan Scrib- ner, John Church, Jonathan Younglove, Timothy Younglove, Oliver Watson, Nathaniel Lee, Elijah Dwight, Esq., Abraham Scutt, Jacob Burghardt, Frederick Johnson, Midian Olds, John Burghardt, Coonrod Burghardt, Benjamin Noble, and Gideon Bostwick, all of Great Barring- ton; whereas the Committee of Correspondence for said Town have presented the association, by and agreeable to a late act of the General Assembly, and you have refused to subscribe the same; the People of this Town are very uneasy that you have not yet resigned your arms, and we
*Roger Viets, for example, removed to Nova Scotia.
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find they are determined to take your arms, in their own way unless you resign them of your own accord. In order to prevent further confusion and mischief we advise you to resign your arms immediately to Sergeant Joshua Root who the committee have desired to receive & take the charge of the same, and we have desired him to give you Notice of this - advice.
Great Barrington, July 9, 1776
M. Hopkins Wm. Whiting Truman Wheeler) 1 Committee Josiah Smith
That warning, and worse, were visited upon the Tories so that by 1778, in Great Barrington as elsewhere, they were so reduced in number as no longer to constitute an element considered dangerously subversive. The history books are silent as to the identity of those who fled to King George's protection, but enough Anglicans remained to enable Gideon Bostwick to keep his church together. With no Congregational minister in town since 1769, some of their number served to augment the Anglican faithful.
Having survived the Revolution, Christ Church in backwoods Massa- chusetts now encountered further adversity in Shays' Rebellion, which was a series of sporadic disorders occurring in 1786-1788. Essentially an uprising of debtors who lacked money to pay taxes and assessments and who had served in the war for little payment or none to the neglect of their homes, and affairs, Shays' Rebellion set the poor against the wealthy. In considerable part, the Anglicans included many of the wealthy citizens of the area. Once again it was an embattled church. Following so closely upon the harassment and expulsion of the Loyalists during the Revolution, the widespread social unrest so demoralized the populace that both Angli- can and Congregational churches were neglected. The Congregational Church with no minister and Christ Church, after Gideon Bostwick's death in 1793, were both left without resident spiritual leaders during those parlous times. The Congregational Church entered upon a period of vir- tually total eclipse, for in the thirty-seven years from Samuel Hopkins' de- parture in 1769 to the settlement of Elijah Wheeler in 1806, it had little but a three-year term of Isaac Foster in the early 1790's and the devotion of its deacons to sustain it. It was reduced to but seven men and thirteen women.
Christ Church, on the other hand, was kept alive during these, its darkest days, by several priests serving irregularly on a supply basis: David B. Lynson, Caleb Child, Jasper D. Jones, Ezra Bradley, Daniel Burhans. Abraham Brunson, Tilotson Brunson and Bethel Judd. It is likely that all came from Connecticut, for Christ Church, now that America was free from Britain, was no longer governed by London, but was administered by the Diocese of Connecticut, which was formed in 1783 - a number of years before the Diocese of Massachusetts exerted any control over the Episcopal Churches in the Berkshires. Throughout history, trade and culture have followed the river valleys; then, as now, Great Barrington was oriented toward the south rather than to the east, for the Barrier was still formidable.
So it was that the dislocations resulting from the Revolution and Shays' Rebellion, and the chaotic state of public affairs existing until the newly-formed Federal and State governments could exercise and extend
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their authority, coupled with the degeneration of morality chronically at- tendant upon war and manifested by the low degree of religious feeling among the people, took such a toll of the churches in Great Barrington that President Timothy Dwight of Yale was moved to write in 1798 that
the houses in many instances are decayed; the Episcopal Church barely decent; the Congregational ruinous .. . Religion has had here, generally, a doubtful existence, and during the little time in which they have had a minister of the Gospel, he has scarcely been able to find a subsistence.
Possibly Dwight was unduly pessimistic, but it was recorded that Samuel Hopkins, upon a brief return visit to the town in 1794, observed that his old church had broken windows and an unhinged door and was occupied by sheep.
During this low point in the fortunes of Christ Church, what meagre salary the supply priests drew from their impoverished parishioners was supplemented by payments from the Propagation Society, acting through Connecticut. And during the dormancy of the Congregational Church some of its members attended Episcopal services, thus adding their sup- port to the struggling Episcopalians. It was, therefore, Christ Church which during the post-Revolution moral slump kept the light of religion burning in Great Barrington until in the early years of the nineteenth century the Baptists established a church" in 1802 and the Congregational Church was revitalized in 1806 with the re-establishment of a permanent pastorate. The fortunes of Christ Church itself took a turn for the better with the coming of Bethel Judd in 1801.
Prominent among the members of Christ Church during this period were Samuel and William Whiting, Samuel Rosseter, Jacob Van Deusen. Dan Chappel, Job Potter, John Farnam, Ezekiel Stone, David Wainwright, Walter Pynchon and John Arnold, whose names occur again and again in the various church offices. And toward the turn of the century the parish grew in membership.
III
In seaboard Massachusetts, however, the advent of peace brought an abatement of partisan fervor and renewed strength to the Anglican Church; and in September of 1784 five clergymen met in Boston with two from Rhode Island to plan for their Church's future. Wishing to preserve the distinctive features of the Church of England in its transition to the Epis- copal Church, they resolved:
That the Episcopal Church in the United States of America is and ought to be independent of all foreign authority ecclesiastical and civil;
That the doctrines of the Gospel be maintained as now professed by the Church of England and uniformity of worship be continued as near as may be to the Liturgy of said church;
That the succession of the Ministry be agreeable to the usage which re- quireth three orders of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.
Not long after, the American Episcopate was bestowed on November 14, 1784, in Aberdeen, Scotland, when Samuel Seabury of New London. Connecticut, was consecrated the first American Bishop. There followed in 1787 the English consecrations of Bishops Provoost and White of New York and Pennsylvania, respectively, to give America the required number to establish apostolic succession. The church achieved national unity at
*At one time with ninety members, it later became extinet.
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the first General Convention in 1789, when the threatened schism between the Scottish and English advocates was healed and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America was formed to embrace the several Dioceses along the Atlantic seaboard. It adopted the Thirty Nine Articles of the Anglican Church with but minor changes occasioned by the sepa- ration from England; and it revised the Book of Common Prayer, main- taining its close conformity with that of the parent church, in accordance with the purpose that
this church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship, or further than local circumstances require.
The Diocese of Massachusetts is considered to have been founded in 1785, although it was not until 1797 that Edward Bass was consecrated Bishop and the Diocese made complete. At the first Diocesan Convention over which Bishop Bass presided in Trinity Church, Boston, on May 30, 1797, there were present "five clergy and lay delegates from seven parishes, including two from the Berkshires". None was specifically from Christ Church in Great Barrington; but among the clergy present was Daniel Burhans who, it will be recalled, was one of the several priests to supply Christ Church during the interregnum following Gideon Bostwick's death. The two lay delegates represented Trinity Church, Lenox, and St. Luke's, Lanesborough.
Although Daniel Burhans was never Rector of Christ Church, he had something more than a casual connection with it since as a protegé of Gideon Bostwick he had been ordained by Bishop Seabury at the Con- vention of the Diocese of Connecticut in Middletown in 1793, on the re- turn trip home from which Bostwick had died. We may, therefore, consider our parish to have been represented, albeit unofficially, at that first con- vention of the fully-constituted Diocese of Massachusetts in 1797.
IV
After Gideon Bostwick's death in 1793, Christ Church was for twelve years without a resident priest. The Wardens had asked Daniel Burhans, Bostwick's protege, to accept the parish; apparently he declined, for in October of that year it was suggested that "David B. Lynson, a Candidate for Orders in the American Episcopal Church" be engaged to preach one-half the time at the rate of four dollars a Sunday, subject to the condition that he obtain Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. Evi- dently Lynson failed to achieve ordination as soon as expected, for it was not long until the church was looking for a priest, Lynson meanwhile con- tinuing to serve as Lay Reader.
In May of 1795 the church offered Caleb Child £60 for permanent settlement as Lay Reader on a half-time basis and any help it might give him toward ordination. Child preached for some months and so favorably impressed his auditors that the church sent to "the Reverend Bishop and Clergy of Connecticut" its earnest recommendation for ordination, prom- ising to call him to the parish. Child was duly ordained and offered $150 a year for preaching half-time, but the church declined to pay the costs of his ordination and, apparently, lost his services. He brought suit against the Society, but its outcome is not recorded.
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In 1798 it was voted
that the Rev. Daniel Burhans be requested and authorized to represent this Society at the ensuing Convention of Episcopal Clergy in Con- necticut and that he be requested to use his influence and endeavors that the said Society be supplied with some suitable person to fill their pulpit.
Probably the good people of Christ Church were desperate, for Bishop Bass of Massachusetts neglected the far western portion of his Diocese and never visited the churches there. Whatever the reason for his failure to send a priest to Great Barrington, the people at Christ Church could only turn once more to Connecticut, whence they had always ob- tained their clergy. And once more, probably at Burhans' urging, Con- hecticut sent Ezra Bradley, who served during 1799-1800.
He remained only two years, so the parish in 1801 was, as its minutes stated, "destitute of a clergyman". In such periods, the previously-men- tioned Jasper D. Jones, Abraham Brunson and Tilotson Brunson officiated occasionally. The turning point, in retrospect, came in 1801, with the com- ing of Bethel Judd. Offered the rectorship of Christ Church for no more than thirty-six weeks a year, Judd elected to serve the parish only on a tem- porary basis. This arrangement prevailed until the year 1805, resulting in the most stable ministry since the death of Gideon Bostwick. When he was absent, some of the other men named above supplied.
Under Judd's temporary but extended ministry in the first years of the new century, Christ Church started to move out of the doldrums. In spite of all that he did for that little church in Berkshire County, his name is quite unknown to the records of the Diocese of Massachusetts. Probably Bishop Bass never met him. But he was prominent in the affairs of the Diocese of Connecticut. Ordained in 1798, Bethel Judd was rector of churches in Norwalk and New London, Connecticut, and one of thirty-four clergymen who organized the Diocesan Missionary Society. The prime purpose of this group was to supply vacant parishes and without doubt it was under its auspices that Judd served Christ Church. The increasing viability of our church after the turn of the century can surely be attributed to his guidance. It was under his leadership that the church belatedly en- tered into union with the Convention of the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1804 and he may have been the one who effected the re-naming of the church as "St. James'", since the first record of that designation is found in a document shortly be quoted. It was Judd who presided at the Parish meeting in 1804 at which it was voted to call Samuel Griswold to be the first incumbent priest and rector in twelve years.
Although the Diocese of Massachusetts had been founded in 1785, Christ Church was so remote from Boston and so little the object of any interest in Boston, that it had never formally asociated itself with the Diocese. Rather, it had continued to look to Connecticut for its clergy and for its liaison with the greater Episcopal Church. But Bethel Judd, the missionary, saw to it that his charge moved into the stream of church life most appropriate to its location, as the following document in the Parish archives attests:
At a meeting of the Church and congregation of St. James' Church in Great Barrington on Sunday the 20th day of May 1804; Rev. Bethel Judd presiding :
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Voted - That the Church and congregation do accede to the Ecclesi- astical Constitution for the government of the Episcopal Church in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as agreed upon by the Clergy and Lay Delegates;
Voted - That Samuel Whiting Esq. be chosen a Lay Delegate to repre- sent the Church and congregation in the Convention to be holden at Boston on the Tuesday preceding the last Wednesday of May current, and that the said Samuel Whiting Esq. be requested to attend the same.
Whiting, who was also chosen Treasurer of the Society at that meeting, duly attended the Diocesan meeting in Boston on May 29, 1804, upon which occasion the Society entered into union with the Convention as chronicled in its Journal for 1804:
Received a vote from the congregation of St. James' Church, Great Bar- rington, that said church do accede to the Constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Commonwealth.
Even as Great Barrington's Episcopal Church was being revitalized, adversity overtook the Diocese of Massachusetts. Bishop Bass, not a strong leader, died in 1803 without having added any new parishes to his Diocese and he had never visited his Berkshire outposts. His successor, the more dynamic Bishop Samuel Parker, died after only four months in office and in 1805 the discouraged Diocese felt itself no longer able to support its own Bishop. The Diocese drifted leaderless until 1810 when, in cooperation with the Dioceses of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island, which were encountering similar difficulties, the affairs of all were merged into one enormous "Eastern Diocese", which supported one Bishop together instead of five separately. At its head was Alexander Viets Griswold", who as Bishop presided in turn over the separate conventions of the component Dioceses.
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