USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > The biography of a church; a brief history of Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts > Part 3
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"Soon we heard the sound of fife and drum and knew that the commander-in-chief was approaching. The two Vestrymen or wardens whom I have mentioned before stood facing the middle door, with wands of office in hand, crossed, ready to escort General Washington to his place. As he entered they each made a most stately bow, which was returned with his usual courtesy. They preceded him up the east aisle to a pew within two of the Vestry door. Major Mifflin walked by his side as had been arranged and took the seat of honor next him; then followed a long row of officers in their best uniforms, for every one who could be spared from duty had been requested to be present. The body-guard of our chief stood around him and threw their
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
shakos rather irreverently we thought, on the window sills.
"The soldiers, a company of whom were present, grounded their arms and nothing was heard save the shuffling feet of the Negroes in the background, the former slaves of the Tories who had often come here with their masters in days gone by. The clerk brought out the huge prayer books given by the Honorable Thomas Lechmere and found the places, putting in long purple and gold markers, and Mr. Palfrey, the chaplain, read service. He had composed a prayer instead of that in use for the King, and we thought it very good. The townspeople wondered if King George would be prayed for as usual. Unfortu- nately the organ could not be used. Some of the leaden pipes had been taken out to furnish ammunition for our men at the fight in Charlestown last June, and it was quite out of order, but a bass viola and clarionet played by some musical soldiers led the singing which was very good. The strong voices of the many men who thronged the Church made fine music for my ears, and when part of Psalm CXVIII and a verse from Psalm CXIX was rolled out I saw some tearful eyes. . . .
"The service was long, but it was delightful to me, and as I sat in the square pew with my back to the Chancel I could just peep over the top as I used to do at St. Peter's in your dear town, when I was visiting Uncle Biddle last year. I could not keep from watching General Washington's seri- ous face, and their stiff wardens who ever and anon took up their wands to tap a noisy urchin standing under the organ loft or a colored boy who was unattentive. Mr. Lee looked as if better days were dawning. We stole out as we had come, through the Vestry room, to avoid the crowd and officers."
Lydia Biddle was evidently not a patriot, as she closes the letter with the following sentence:
"You know where my heart is fixed, and yesterday see- ing the empty places of his friends, I am half inclined to go
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THE CHURCH DURING THE REVOLUTION
over to the enemy and leave these thirteen Colonies for- ever. But dear Sallie, you will not blame me or call it trea- son in your ever faithful friend." 7
While Dorothy Dudley in her diary does not give an extensive account of the service, she contrasts the con- gregation at the service with the congregation she had known years before the Revolution in such an interesting manner that her remarks give us a particularly valuable picture of earlier and happier years.
"How very different was the scene from that in the days before the war. The General's majestic figure, bent rever- ently in prayer, as with devout earnestness he entered into the service; the smallness of the band of worshippers, and the strangeness of the circumstances and the surroundings. There was nothing but the contrast to recall the wealth and fashion which were wont to congregate there. I remember the families as they used to sit in church. First, in front of the chancel were the Temples, who every Sabbath drove from Ten Hills Farm; Mr. Robert Temple and his accom- plished wife and lovely daughters. Their estate, which is a very fine one, is on the supposed site of Governor Win- throp's house as early as 1631, and where, it is thought, the little bark, the Blessing of the Bay, the first vessel built in American waters, was launched for its first voyage across the ocean. Mr. Temple is a stanch loyalist, and at the be- ginning of war took passage for England, leaving his family at the Farm under General Ward's protection. The vessel, however, was detained, and he obliged to take up his resi- dence in our camp. Behind the Temples sat the Royalls, relatives of Mrs. Henry Vassall, the Inmans and the Bor- lands, who owned and occupied the Bishop's Palace, as the magnificent mansion, built by Rev. Mr. Apthorp, opposite the president's house, is called. The house is grand in pro- portions and architecture, and is fitted in every respect to bear the name which clings to it. It was thought that Mr.
7 Boston Daily Advertiser, Jan. 1st issue, 1876, p. 1.
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
Apthorp had an eye to the bishoprie when he came to take charge of Christ Church, and put up this house of stately eleganee. But whatever his wishes may have been, they were not realized, for he abruptly terminated his ministry in Cambridge after a few years. Among his congregation were the Faneuils, the Lechmeres, the Lees, the Olivers, the Ruggleses, the Phipses, and the Vassalls. Many of these families were connected by relationship. Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Lechmere, and Mrs. Vassall the elder, arc sisters of Colonel David Phips, and daughters of Licutenant-Governor Spencer Phips. The "pretty little, dapper man, Colonel Oliver," as Reverend Mr. Serjeant used to call in sport our sometime lieutenant-governor, married a sister of Colonel John Vassall the younger, and Colonel Vassall married his. Mrs. Ruggles and Mrs. Borland are aunts of Colonel Vas- sall's. These families were on intimate terms with one an- other, and scarcely a day passed that did not bring them together for social pleasures. Judge Jonathan Sewall, who afterwards occupied Judge Richard Lechmere's house, mar- ried a daughter of Mr. Edmund Quiney, an elder sister of Mrs. John Haneoek. I well remember the train of car- riages that rolled up to the church door, bearing the wor- shippers to the Sabbath service. The inevitable red cloak of Judge Joseph Lee, his badge of office in the King's serv- ice hung in graceful folds around his stately form; the beauty and elegance of the ladies were conspicuous, as silks and brocades rustled at every motion, and India shawls told of wealth and luxury. The ties of blood and friendship were strengthened by those of a common faith, and the treasury of the church was filled by cheerful givers from their abundance. Now everything is changed - all who took such deep interest in the welfare of the church, all the original subseribers for the building are gone, with cxeep- tion of Judge Joseph Lcc, who is unmolested on account of his moderate principles, and Mr. John Pigeon, who is a patriot." 8
8 Dudley, ibid., pp. 50-51. (Ten Hills Farm is now part of Somerville.)
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THE CHURCH DURING THE REVOLUTION
A Unique Funeral Service
Following the evacuation of Boston in March, 1776, and the consequential departure of the Continental Army, Cambridge saw no military activity until November, 1777, when the captured Hessian and British troops numbering 4200 were brought to Cambridge to be kept in the old barracks, built for the besiegers of Boston, as prisoners of war.
One of the saddest episodes in the history of Christ Church occurred when Lieutenant Richard Brown, one of the English prisoners, was driving down what was probably Avon Hill and lost control of his horses. The American sentry challenged him to halt. When Lieu- tenant Brown was unable to do so, the sentry, not realiz- ing what was happening, shot Lieutenent Brown through the head. This regrettable incident naturally aroused the sympathy of the community. By the consent of General Heath, commanding the guard in Cambridge, Christ Church was allowed to be opened for the funeral service for Lieutenant Brown on June 19, 1778. It was attended by many English officers and soldiers as well as by many of the German officers and by some Americans.
The body of Lieutenant Brown was believed to have been interred in the Vassall tomb in the crypt of the church. During the interment the town folk entered the building and virtually wrecked the interior. Samuel Batchelder says that more damage was done to it on this occasion than it had received during the entire war period. The following is the description of the ransacking of the church as quoted by Samuel Batchelder from Ensign Anbury's "Travels":
"I cannot pass over the littleness of mind, and the pitiful resentment of the Americans, in a very trifling circum- stance, (for) during the time the service was performing
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
over the body (at the tomb in the cellar?), the Americans seized the opportunity of the Church being open, which had been shut since the commencement of hostilities, to plunder, ransack and deface every thing they could lay their hands on, destroying the pulpit, reading-desk and communion-table, and ascending the organ loft, destroyed the bellows and broke all the pipes of a very handsome instrument." 9
Parts of the organ were found in various parts of Cam- bridge for a long time after this desecration.
After this incident the church building again stood abandoned. As we close the story of this period of what Samuel Batchelder calls Christ Church's era of "desecra- tion and neglect," we may well quote his own description :
"The building was little better than a ruin, 'the doors shattered and all the windows broken out, exposed to rain and storms and every sort of depredation, its beauty gone, its sanctuary defiled, the wind howling through its deserted aisles and about its stained and decaying walls; the whole building being a disgrace instead of an ornament to the town.' The congregation was as completely shattered as the church. Of the whole band of worshippers only John Pigeon and Judge Lee remained in Cambridge. . . . 10
And so the Christ Church building stood all but neglected and all but forgotten until 1790.
9 Ibid., Batchelder, p. 46 (from Ensign Anbury's Travels, Vol. II, p. 234). 10 Ibid., p. 47.
1231519 CHAPTER IV
THE READING PERIOD 1790-1839
BY THE YEAR 1790, no service had been held in Christ Church in twelve years and no regular services for sixteen years. The building stood like a monumental shell in the heart of Cambridge. It had no congregation and no minister. Of the sixty-eight original subscribers to the building and the twenty original purchasers of pews, the only names to appear on the parish records after the Revolution are those of John Pigeon, Esq., and Judge Joseph Lee. As we have seen, the former was a patriot, while the latter, though a loyalist, had been so moderate in his opinions as to remain unmolested. Judge Lee died in 1802 at the age of 93.
Fortunately, some of the Episcopalians living in Boston, cognizant of the value of preserving the church from an architectural as well as from a religious point of view and encouraged by the Rev. Samuel Parker, rector of Trinity Church, Boston, initiated a subscription for the restora- tion of the church building. The circular appealing for funds indicated that "in the course of the late War the Church had been much damaged, the windows being totally destroyed, the Pews, Altar and Pulpit exceedingly injured, and the Organ wholly torn to pieces." The ap- peal was successful, the restoration of the church was carried out, and on July 14, 1790, the church was dedi-
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
cated and set apart "to the solemn and public worship of Almighty God."
Opening and dedicating the church, however, did not produce a congregation, nor did it produce funds for the
FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS MAGAZINE IN 1792
payment of a minister. The popular feeling evidently remained strong against the Church of England and the things it symbolized. The church for the next thirty- nine years, or until the coming of the Rev. Thomas W. Coit, D.D., as rector in 1829, was to be dependent for services upon a few itinerant clergymen and a great many lay readers.
Worthy of mention is the fact that Elbridge Gerry and Jonathan Simpson, Jr., were elected delegates to repre- sent the parish at the first General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America.
During the seven years following the reopening of the church in 1790, four clergymen and three lay readers con-
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THE READING PERIOD
ducted the services, but the wardens and vestrymen were not able to persuade any one of the clergymen to throw in his lot permanently with the parish. From Easter 1796 until December 1797 the reader was Mr. Theodore Dehon, who in 1812 became Bishop of South Carolina. For eight years, from 1797 to 1805, Mr. William Jenks, who later became a Congregational minister, served as the reader with a salary of two hundred and forty dollars a year, but even the sale of pews at an auction failed to save the church from increasing debt.
In 1807, for no accountable reason, the parish suddenly blossomed into new life. The records say that all the pews except three or four were rented, and the following year the services of a clergyman, the Rev. Asa Eaton, rector of Christ Church, Boston, who agreed to preach once every two months, were secured. Most amazing of all, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars was con- tributed by the church toward the support of the first Bishop of Massachusetts. The prosperity was unfortu- nately of a most temporary sort, for by 1809 the church again had only a lay reader. During the next fifteen years the flickering spark of spiritual life was kept alive by eight lay readers until a clergyman was at last secured in the person of the Rev. George Otis in 1824. The dire straits into which the parish had fallen and the methods which were used to remedy it are thus described by Samuel Batchelder:
"The poverty of the parish had now (1823) reached such a point that only two hundred dollars could be raised for the support of public worship and all other expenses, and the wardens were instructed to supply a reader 'as far as it shall be practicable with the means provided.' It was in this darkest hour of the parish's history that the 'Wardens' Fund' was begun, now the most important source of reve- nue the church possesses. The women of the parish, in the
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
year 1820, subscribed and collected the sum of four hun- dred dollars and ninety six cents 'as a fund towards the support of a settled minister.' A society of Harvard stu- dents, the Δειπνόφαγοι, or Dinner-eaters, being on the point of dissolution, generously contributed to this fund the contents of their treasury, two hundred and sixty-five dollars. Other subscriptions raised the amount to over eight hundred dollars. The sum total was received by the wardens 'to be put out to interest on good security, until said Society (the Episcopal Church at Cambridge) shall settle a regularly ordained minister. And at all times here- after when said fund shall be continued as an increasing fund; but whenever said Society shall have such minister settled with them, the one half of the annual income of the whole fund for the time being shall be appropriated to- wards his support, and the other half shall go to increase the fund." 1
The plight of the parish was so serious that regular services had to be discontinued in 1822 and 1823. So disgraceful was this for the reputation of the Diocese that in 1824 a committee was appointed by the Diocese of Massachusetts to solicit subscriptions for repairing the building, which during this "reading period" had fallen into a bad state of disrepair. The appeal was for a fund of three thousand dollars, which was raised during the next two years. Harvard College donated three hundred dollars. One of the grounds for giving which was urged in the appeal was the fact that Episcopal students com- prised one seventh of each class at Harvard or about forty- five men in 1822, and that it was therefore essential to keep Christ Church open for their benefit. The appeal also noted that this was particularly necessary because the college authorities would not allow students the privilege of going to Boston churches, and Episcopal students were thus compelled to attend services at Holden Chapel!
1 Batchelder, S., ibid., p. 56.
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THE READING PERIOD
About half of the fund of $3000 was used during the summer and autumn of 1825 for repairs to the exterior of the building, including a complete reshingling of the roof. Not only repairs but considerable alterations were made in the interior, including the removing of the four windows in the west wall, the two in the apse, and the two at the end of the aisles, the placing of the pulpit and read- ing desk inside the chancel rail, the carving of the capitals at the tops of the columns, and the conversion of the pews on the center aisle from box pews to slip pews.
The same year an instructor at Harvard who was in Orders, the Rev. George Otis, conducted the services. The parish elected him rector, but the Harvard Corpora- tion would not allow him to accept. He continued to officiate, however, serving the church for four years, until he succumbed to typhoid fever and died in 1828 at the age of 32.
It must have been evident to the tiny congregation during "the reading period" that the parish could not possibly be revived without the services of an able clergy- man. That credit may be given where credit is certainly due, this fact should be emphasized, namely, that had it not been for the considerable number of lay readers, thirteen of whose names have actually survived in the records, who officiated at the services during this period, the parish would have completely disintegrated and the building become a museum. It is noteworthy also that many of the lay readers, if not all of them, were students at Harvard University.
The church building having been thoroughly put in a state of good repair from the point of view of beauty and utility, the parish at last found a clergyman who was willing to accept the position of rector, which meant undertaking the task of attracting and building a con- gregation large enough to support the work of the parish.
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
In 1829, the Rev. Thomas W. Coit, D.D., rector of St. Peter's Church, Salem, became rector and for six years worked to make a parish in name become a parish in re- ality. In 1835 Dr. Coit accepted a call to Lexington, Kentucky, and the Rev. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, D.D., accepted the rectorship from which he was to resign ten months later for reasons of health. From 1837 to 1839 the Rev. Thomas H. Vail served as rector, but it was not until the close of 1839 that a young man willing to throw in his lot with the parish was discovered in the person of the Rev. Nicholas Hoppin, D.D.
Can the reader recall any parish which has had a more extraordinary history than that of the first eighty-four years of the existence of Christ Church parish? Could any church survive more "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" than did this parish in those first eighty years? Christ Church owes an immeasurable debt to the lay readers and, indeed, to Harvard University from whose uncongenial religious atmosphere most of them came. Had it not been for these student lay readers, Christ Church parish might have changed its ecclesiastical clothing and, like its mother parish, King's Chapel, be today a high church Unitarian fellowship!
That many of these lay readers were men of no mean ability and of true consecration is revealed by the fact that a number of them entered the Christian ministry and that two became bishops. Theodore Dehon became the second Bishop of South Carolina and the thirteenth Bishop of the Church in the United States in 1812 and Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright became provisional Bishop of New York in 1852. Of interest also is the fact that the Rev. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, who served the parish as rector for ten months in 1835-36, became the first Bishop of Central Pennsylvania in 1871.
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THE READING PERIOD
TEMPORARY MINISTERS AND LAY READERS
1790-1839
1790-1791 Rev. Joseph Warren
1791 Rev. William Montaguc
Rev. Dr. William Walter
1791-1795
Rev. William Montague
Rev. Samuel Parker Mr. John Pipon Mr. Joseph Willard, Jr.
1795-1796 Mr. William Hill
1796-1797
Mr. Theodore Dehon
1797-1805
Mr. William Jenks
1806-1807 Mr. Samuel Sewall
1807-1808
Mr. Abbott
1808-1809 Rev. Asa Eaton, D.D.
1809-1811 Mr. Loring Mr. Samuel Sewall
Mr. Ralph Sanger
1811-1812
Mr. Evan Malbone Johnson
1812-1815 Mr. Walter Cranston
1815-1817 Mr. Isaac Boyle
1817-1822 Mr. Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright Mr. George Otis
1822-1824 Services discontinued
1824-1828 Rev. George Otis
1829-1835 Rev. Thomas W. Coit, D.D., Rector
1835-1836 Rev. Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe, D.D., Rector
1836-1837 Rev. Walter Clark Mr. Charles Mason
1837-1839 Rev. Thomas H. Vail, Rector
1839 Rev. Horatio Southgate Rev. George Leeds Rev. John Williams
CHAPTER V
NICHOLAS HOPPIN 1839-1874 BUILDER OF THE PARISH
WHEN WINWOOD SERJEANT fled from Cambridge in 1774 there were forty communicants, and that number was not again equalled until 1837. The church still had a Tory flavor and its liturgy was essentially that of the feared and disliked Church of England. In addition, as the little flock could offer a minister neither a living wage nor a home, their prospects of securing a permanent rector seemed almost negligible.
Fortune smiled, however, when on the first Sunday in Advent, 1839, a young clergyman named Nicholas Hoppin conducted the service. The twenty-seven-year-old clergy- man was a native of Providence, Rhode Island, a graduate of Brown University and the General Theological Sem- inary, and had served for a year as the first Episcopal missionary in Bangor, Maine. The previous year he had married Elizabeth Parker, a granddaughter of Samuel Parker, the second Bishop of Massachusetts, and we may imagine that she approved the idea of a parish in Cam- bridge. Little did Nicholas Hoppin realize that first Sunday that he was embarking upon a ministry that was to continue for thirty-five years and to be not only the longest but probably the most significant ministry in the history of the parish, for as we shall see, Nicholas Hoppin came to a weak and struggling mission church and he left it one of the strongest parishes in Massachusetts.
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NICHOLAS HOPPIN
44
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CHURCH
Cambridge in 1839
The picture of Cambridge in 1839 is so different from the Cambridge of today that it is almost impossible for us to conceive of it. Cambridge was a town which com- prised three villages; Old Cambridge, roughly the area from Harvard Square to Watertown and Arlington; Cambridgeport, roughly the section of the city in what is now Central and Kendall Squares; and East Cambridge, the section of the city from Prospect Street east to Lech- mere and the Charlestown Bridge; and these villages were largely separated by marshy land impassable save for a few roads on high ground and a half dozen canals. Be- tween the three sections there was the keenest rivalry. For example, when in 1832 the citizens of Old Cambridge, as the village in the Harvard Square area was called, re- fused to allow a highway to be built across the Common and insisted on its preservation as public ground, the citizens of East Cambridge fought for and secured the removal of the County Court from beside the Common to East Cambridge, where it remains to this day.
The village of Old Cambridge was separated by natural boundaries from the surrounding settlements. Beyond the Charles River on the south and west almost a mile of salt marsh lay between it and Brighton; to the north and west, Mount Auburn and Fresh Pond with neighboring swamps and clay pits separated it from Watertown and Belmont; on the north and east uninhabited and almost impassable boggy land, overgrown with woods and tan- gled underbrush, made communication with Somerville (then part of Charlestown and East Cambridge) ex- tremely difficult and bald Dana Hill and swamp land along the river served as a natural boundary between Old Cambridge and Cambridgeport.
In 1842 the citizens of Old Cambridge petitioned the
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NICHOLAS HOPPIN
General Court to be allowed to be divided from East Cambridge and Cambridgeport and be incorporated as Cambridge or as Old Cambridge. After discussions at Town Meetings for several years, the proposal was de- feated and the three villages were incorporated as the City of Cambridge in 1846, with a population of about 12,000 inhabitants.
Of a Sunday, worshippers might choose, besides Christ Church, to attend the First Parish Church Unitarian; the Orthodox Congregational Church, which, under the dour leadership of Abiel Holmes, had recently seceded from the Unitarian congregation; the Old Cambridge Baptist Church; Harvard's recently built Appleton Chapel; or St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, which opened for worship in 1849.
Christ Church in 1839
While Dr. Vail, Dr. Hoppin's predecessor, reported forty-one communicants when he resigned, some of the number left with him; thus, Dr. Hoppin started with twenty-nine communicants, although the average church attendance was about fifty, including thirteen students from the college.1 Pews were rented at $15.00 per year and the rentals for the year ending 1839 amounted to $365.00. It was customary in those days for the pew rent to pay the rector's salary, but such a sum obviously had to be increased before Dr. Hoppin could be elected rector. In four years' time, as a result of Dr. Hoppin's labor, this amount was not only increased to $922.00 but the money was raised to buy a site and build a rectory. Meanwhile Nicholas Hoppin, finding this response on the part of the parish to his ministry most encouraging and seeing the possibilities in the future of the parish, in June, 1843 accepted his election as rector.
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