USA > North Carolina > Lives of the bishops of North Carolina from the establishment of the episcopate in that state down to the division of the diocese > Part 7
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Just after the death of Bishop Ravenscroft a school was estab- lished at Fayetteville and called Ravenscroft Academy in his honor. It was incorporated by chapter 147 of the Laws of 1831-'32. The board of trustees named in this act were Charles P. Mallett, Charles Stuart, Charles T. Haigh, John W. Wright and Robert Strange. How long the school lasted we are un- able to state. Many years afterwards there was a school for boys founded at Asheville and called Ravenscroft School, but this has discontinued operations also. Some account of it will be given later on in this work. At the time of the establishment of Saint Mary's School in Raleigh (some mention of which will later be made in the sketch of Bishop Ives), its campus was called Ravenscroft Grove-a name which may have been given it before that time, when the same site was occupied by the Episcopal School for Boys. Though the grove no longer goes by that name, the Bishop's house (therein situated) which was built in 1903, has been given the name "Ravenscroft" by Bishop Cheshire, its first occupant.
While North Carolina has been thus honoring the memory of Bishop Ravenscroft, he has not been forgotten in Tennessee. In his History of the Church in the Diocese of Tennessee, the Reverend Arthur Howard Noll says that the first church build- ing erected in the Western District of that State was Raven- scroft Chapel, built by Mr. J. J. Alston near his residence, five miles east of Randolph in Tipton County. This building was consecrated by Bishop Otey on the 23d of October, 1836. The Alstons were from North Carolina and had then recently set- tled in Tipton County. Later on in the above-mentioned work Mr. Noll refers to Ravenscroft Chapel, and to Saint John's
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Church in Maury County (the latter built by the Polks, an- other family from North Carolina), as two examples of planta- tion churches built with the religious needs of the negro slaves in view. At the Sunday morning services in these churches, after all the white communicants had received the elements, it was not an uncommon sight (says the writer last quoted) to see the altar-rail thronged with negroes, partaking with reverence of the soul-nourishing food of the Body and Blood of Christ. Ravenscroft Chapel was in ruins at the close of the war, but was later restored and is still in use. From Mr. Noll's work we also learn that in the Winter of 1848-'49 Bishop Otey established an institution near Columbia and named it Ravenscroft College. This was afterwards closed for lack of funds.
In the parlor of Saint Mary's School, at Raleigh, there is a handsome full-length oil portrait of Bishop Ravenscroft, painted by Jacob Eichholtz, a celebrated Philadelphia artist, who in his day made portraits of many famous Americans, including John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Nicholas Biddle, President of the Bank of the United States, and others of scarcely less note. Another oil portrait of Ravenscroft (bust size) was presented by the Bishop to Senator Haywood; and, after the latter's death, his children gave it to the Diocese. It is now in the See House at Raleigh. Another (probably the first which Eichholtz made of Raven- scroft) was owned by the late Bishop Green of Mississippi. The large portrait at Saint Mary's was painted by order of Charles P. Mallett, senior warden of Saint John's Church at Fayetteville, being begun in 1829 and finished in 1830. It was obtained from that gentleman some years before the War be- tween the States by the Rector of Saint Mary's, Reverend Aldert Smedes.
Bishop Green (before he was elevated to the Episcopate) was with Ravenscroft in Philadelphia when Eichholtz painted the above portraits. Wishing to get the best, several studios were
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visited. One artist was so much struck with Ravenscroft's ap- pearance that he told Green he would do the work free of charge. This offer was declined, however, and Eichholtz was engaged. Not long afterwards Bishop Ravenscroft preached (in Christ Church at Philadelphia) a sermon of uncommon power, which attracted wide and favorable comment. Returning from serv- ices on that occasion he asked Green, in great disgust: "Did you see that rascal in church ?" In some surprise his companion asked whom he meant. "Why that fellow Eichholtz," answered the Bishop, "for I know he came there not so much to worship God as to look at me." And it was even so, for (as the artist himself afterwards said) he had seated himself in the center of the Church to get the Bishop's spirit and expression as he appeared in the chancel and pulpit. Those who have seen his work cannot doubt that he succeeded.
In the Fall of 1830, some months after Bishop Ravenscroft died, a two-volume edition of his sermons was published by the Protestant Episcopal Press, New York, the first volume con- taining a steel engraving from one of the Eichholtz portraits. This work was edited by the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew Wain- wright, afterwards Provisional Bishop of New York. There is also in the first volume a memoir of Ravenscroft by Walker Anderson, in later years Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida. Neither the names of Wainwright nor Anderson, how- ever, appear on the title page or elsewhere in the work. A second edition of these sermons (without portrait) was pub- lished by E. J. Hale & Company, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1856, the cost of issuing it being partly paid with money real- ized from a bequest in the will of John W. Wright, of Fayette- ville, who was for many years treasurer of the Diocese. The second edition is lessened in value by some of Bishop Raven- scroft's strongest doctrinal arguments being left out, notably his discourse entitled The Doctrines of the Church Vindicated. a reply to Doctor John H. Rice. The latter tract, though writ- ten in a rather fierce spirit (perhaps justified by the attacks
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which brought it forth), was one of the strongest arguments, if not the strongest, ever made by the Bishop in support of the doctrines which he proclaimed. In addition to the controversy with Doctor Rice, Bishop Ravenscroft had several others, in- cluding one with a Bible Society in Raleigh. With regard to the latter, it was occasioned by the Bishop's conviction that the Bible could not be profitably studied without a teacher. He delivered a sermon, upholding his views, from the text: "And Philip ran thither to him and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest ? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me?" No man more strongly advocated constant study of the Scriptures than did Bishop Ravenscroft ; but of such study, without intelli- gent instruction, he did not approve.
In 1858 a small volume of 152 pages, entitled the Life of Bishop Ravenscroft, by the Reverend John N. Norton, was published in New York, this being one of a series of biographies of American Bishops written by that author. It is dedicated : "To Josiah Collins, Esq., of Somerset Place, Lake Scupper- nong, North Carolina, as a Tribute of Respect for his Distin- guished Abilities, and for his Devotion to the Cause of the Church."
In addition to the above-mentioned memoirs of Bishop Raven- scroft by Norton and Anderson, another was written many years later by one of Ravenscroft's former pupils, Bishop Green, of Mississippi, and published in the American Church Review of January, 1871. In the fifth volume of a work published in 1859, and entitled Annals of the American Pulpit (the Reverend William B. Sprague, compiler), there is also a memoir of Bishop Ravenscroft, this being based upon the sketch by Anderson, a letter from the Reverend Henry M. Mason, and data furnished by Edward Lee Winslow.
It would be a difficult task, even for a writer of ability and discernment, to portray the personal character of Bishop Raven- seroft in a few words, and it seems a particularly hopeless under-
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taking for the author of the present sketch; yet a few lines on this point cannot with propriety be omitted. He was open and frank in all things. To a friend in Philadelphia he declared: "There is not a thought in this heart of mine that I would not be willing to publish from the steeple of Christ Church yonder." The lust for gold, or for power (save power to advance the king- dom of Christ) found no lodgment in his breast. It was once hinted to him that he might be invited to a diocese much larger than the one of which he was Bishop, and to this he replied with much heat : "I would lose my right arm, sir, sooner than set the first example of 'translation' in the American Episcopate." No Bishop ever more dearly loved the clergy under him or was more loved by them in return. He often spoke of them as if they were his own children. "I wouldn't give my fourteen boys for your whole diocese" was his declaration to the Rector of a fashionable church in New York. The Bishop of Mississippi, in his old age, nearly half a century after Ravenscroft had passed away, alluded to a blessing which he had received with alinost the last breath of his beloved chief pastor, saying: "At this moment those hands still seem to press the writer's head; and whatever favor, either from God or man, may since have come upon him, he willingly ascribes in good part to the benedic- tions of that dying hour."
Among the papers of the Honorable John H. Bryan, now owned by the North Carolina Historical Commission, is a letter to his wife, dated at Raleigh, December 26, 1824, in which he says : "I heard the Bishop deliver a sermon to-day which I wish you could have also heard. He was so much affected as to burst into tears and sob bitterly when he alluded to his past life and merciful deliverance. He cautioned parents. and par- ticularly mothers, about indulging their children in dress and frivolous pleasures, and thereby vitiating their minds and cor- rupting their hearts." Judge Henry Ravenscroft Bryan, of New Bern, North Carolina, is a son of the writer of the above letter, and was given his middle name as a compliment to Bishop Ravenscroft.
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Though much tenderness dwelt in his heart, there never lived a man who was more fierce in the denunciation of sin than was Bishop Ravenscroft. He never used soft phrases with which to coax his hearers into the paths of righteousness. He regarded the authority and doctrines of the church of his choice as based upon the Word of God. On one occasion a young clergyman asked the Bishop to tell him, from personal experience, .what course of study one should map out to pursue as best calculated to promote his usefulness in the ministry, when Ravenscroft pointed to the Bible and replied: "My dear boy, nearly all of my studies have been confined to that; and there are few other books which influence my religious beliefs."
Bishop Ravenscroft was convinced that an Episcopate, with an unbroken succession, was absolutely necessary to constitute an apostolic church; and, as he could not accept the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, the Moravian Church was the only one then existing in America (excepting his own) whose ministry and teachings he considered orthodox. "On the doctrine of divine right in the ministry," he said: "I hold and teach that it can be derived only from the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ by succession in the Church, through the line of Bishops, as dis- tinct from presbyters; that it is essential to the validity of the Sacraments, and from its nature incapable of any gradation. It is either divine right or no right at all: I therefore know noth- ing of any barometrical measurement into high and low Church ; higher than its source I attempt not to carry it-lower than its origin I will not degrade it, and only by its proper proofs will I acknowledge it."*
Bishop Ravenscroft's fierce and sometimes ungovernable temper was a source of continual mortification to himself ; and yet, with all of his seemingly imperious manner, he would meekly receive any reproof given in good faith. To one of his clergy who had written him a private letter in loving solicitude about his infirmity in the above respect, he replied : "I heartily
* Works of Bishop Ravenscroft (edition of 1830), Vol. I., p. 308. VI
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thank you and shall always feel obliged by every hint which may keep me on the watch against its injurious in- fluence, and by every prayer which may prevail for grace to enable me to direct it aright." On another occasion he said: "I have much to be forgiven of God, and I have many pardons also to ask of my fellow-men for my harshness of manner to- wards them"-then, striking his hand upon his breast, he added, "but there has been no harshness here." Indeed, the Bishop's love for his fellow-men was second only to his love for God. Had this not been true, he would have remained an opulent planter in Virginia, enjoying earthly pleasures and caring naught for endangered souls, instead of sacrificing his fortune and shortening his life by never-ending toils and privations in the holy cause of religion. But the ancient promise still holds good, that whosoever will lose his life for the sake of Christ shall find it-so when fortune, health, life itself, all were gone, a brighter existence and richer inheritance remained for this good and faithful servant, and in these he found the reward for which he had long struggled and prayed.
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Bishop Ives.
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LEVI SILLIMAN IVES SECOND BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA
LEVI SILLIMAN IVES,
SECOND BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA.
The family of Ives is one of the oldest in America. Its founder, William Ives, was born about the year 1607, and came to New England in the ship Truelove in 1635. As early as 1639 we find him recorded as one of the freemen of the colony of New Haven, in what is now the State of Connecticut. He died in 1648, leaving a son John. The latter was the father of another John (born 1669, died 1738), who married Mary Gil- lette. John Ives, son of the last named, married Hannah Royce, and died in 1795. He left a son John (fourth of that name in unbroken descent), who was born in 1729 and died in 1816. This John (fourth) was the father of Levi Ives and grand- father of Bishop Ives.
Levi Ives (father of the Bishop) lived for some years in his native State of Connecticut, where he married Fanny Silliman, member of a noted New England family. Removing with his wife and children from Connecticut about the end of the eighteenth century, he settled in Lewis County, New York, and engaged in agricultural pursuits in the latter locality. Later he became insane, and committed suicide by drowning himself in a creek which ran through his farm. Of the ten children bereaved by this tragic event, Levi Silliman Ives, afterwards Bishop, was the eldest, and to his personal history we shall now confine this sketch.
The Right Reverend LEVI SILLIMAN IVES, S. T. D., LL. D., second Bishop of North Carolina and twenty-fifth in the succession of the American Episcopate, came to his Bishop- ric in 1831, upon the death (in the preceding year) of the Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft. His was a strange and eventful life, devoted throughout to the service of God and humanity, yet torn by varying and conflicting doctrinal beliefs- in youth, a Presbyterian; in manhood, an Episcopalian; and
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in age, a Roman Catholic. He was born on the 16th of Septem- ber, 1797, at the town of Meriden, in the State of Connecticut. It was when he was very young that his parents removed to Turin, in Lewis County, New York, and there he spent his child- hood and youth, enjoying such educational advantages as the locality afforded. Later he was a student in the academy at Lowville, in Lewis County. Towards the close of the War of 1812-'15, when little more than a youth, he served for a brief period with the troops under General Pike. Returning to the academy at Lowville, which he had left to enter the army, he resumed his studies with a view to preparing himself for college. As already stated, he had been reared a Presbyterian, and he now determined to enter the ministry of that denomination. In 1816 he became a student in Hamilton College, at Clinton, New York, then registering from Martinsburg in the same State, but left this institution in less than a year, owing to ill health. Shortly thereafter his doctrinal views underwent their first change; and, in 1819, he began a course of study for the ministry of the Episcopal Church, in which he was destined to serve with marked ability until-after the lapse of more than thirty years-his views underwent still another change and he became a Roman Catholic. In 1822 he was ordered deacon by Bishop Hobart, of New York; and, in the year following, was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop White, of Pennsylvania. His first charge was in a missionary station at Batavia, New York; afterwards he served in Pennsylva- nia as Rector of Trinity Church, Philadelphia; and was later Rector of Christ Church at Lancaster, in the same State. He went, in 1827, to New York City to become Assistant Rector of Christ Church; was afterwards Rector of Saint Luke's Church, in the same place, and occupied that post when elected Bishop of North Carolina in 1831. In 1825, he had been united in marriage with Rebecca Hobart, a daughter of the Right Rer- erend John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York. One or more children were born of this union, but none of them grew to maturity.
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As has already been stated in the sketch of Bishop Raven- scroft's life, contained in the present work, that great prelate died on the 5th of March, 1830. Two months later, in May, the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina met, but adjourned without electing his successor. During the succeeding period, before such successor was chosen, Bishop Bowen, of South Caro- lina, was invited to exercise the duties of the Episcopate in North Carolina, and he consented to do so; but to what extent, if any, he labored there, does not appear. On May 19, 1831, another Diocesan Convention assembled, its meeting place being Christ Church, in the city of Raleigh. In that body, on the following Saturday (May 21st), the ballot for Bishop resulted in the unanimous election of the Reverend Doctor Ives. There- upon the Reverend John Avery, Rector of Saint Paul's Church in Edenton and President of the Convention, the Reverend John R. Goodman, Rector of Christ Church in New Bern, and one layman, Mr. Walker Anderson (afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida) were appointed a committee to pro- ceed to New York and formally notify Doctor Ives of his elec- tion. After due consideration, this call was accepted. On Sep- tember 22, 1831, the Bishop-elect was presented in Trinity Church, Southwark, Philadelphia, and there duly consecrated as Bishop of North Carolina by the Right Reverend William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania, the Right Reverend Henry Ustick Onderdonk, Assistant Bishop of the same Diocese, and the Right Reverend Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk, Bishop of New York. 1
Returning to New York City after his consecration, Bishop Ives remained until October, 1831, when he set out for North Carolina-arriving at Warrenton, in the latter State, just a week later, during the same month. From a religious, educa- tional and social viewpoint, in 1831, Warrenton had few, if any, superiors among the towns of North Carolina; and, for a short while after his arrival, Bishop Ives enjoyed the hospitality for which that locality has always been noted. He did not tarry
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long, however, but actively began the duties of his new office, visiting various parts of the Diocese and forming the acquaint- ance of the people among whom his lot had been cast. His home, while in North Carolina, was part of the time in Raleigh and part in Salisbury. He also spent a good deal of his time at Valle Crusis, after he had established that mountain mission.
In February, 1832, while traveling in eastern North Caro- lina, Bishop Ives took occasion to pay his respects to the aged widow of Bishop-elect Pettigrew-doubtless being impelled to this courtesy by the same sentiments which had been entertained by Bishop Ravenscroft on a previous occasion, when visiting that lady, as heretofore noted.
As has already been mentioned in the sketch of Bishop Raven- scroft, the Diocese of Tennessee was organized during his visit to that State in 1829, and he presided over its first convention. It was not until 1834, however, that the first Bishop of Ten- nessee (the Right Reverend James Hervey Otey) was conse- crated. In the meantime, Bishop Ives faithfully labored to keep up the work there begun by his predecessor. Recounting a visit paid there in the Summer of 1832, he said that he could not let the subject pass without expressing his great gratification at the daily increasing prosperity of the Church in Tennessee, at its being sustained by so able and devoted a band of clergymen (though far too small for its wants), and at the kind and friendly attention he had everywhere received during a visita- tion rendered by duty much shorter than he would have wished to make it. While on this tour through Tennessee, Bishop Ives presided over the fourth Annual Convention of that Diocese.
In October, 1832, Bishop Ives attended the General Conven- tion of the Church in New York City, returning to North Caro- lina in the month following, and stopping for a short while in Richmond on the way. Of his visit to the city last named he says: "While there, in consideration of the bad health of the Bishop of Virginia, I aided him in the examination of the Rev-
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erend John Burke, formerly a presbyter of the Roman Catholic Church, who was thereupon admitted to officiate in the Pro- testant Episcopal Church." The Reverend Mr. Burke, here mentioned, later came to North Carolina. After teaching school for a while in the town of Smithville (now called Southport), in Brunswick County, he was successively Rector of Christ Church in New Bern, and Calvary Church in Wadesboro. He removed to South Carolina in 1839. Another acquisition from the Roman Catholic priesthood is mentioned by Bishop Ives (in his address to the Diocesan Convention of 1843) when he said: "The Reverend John Fielding, a priest of the Roman communion, who in the Spring of 1840, made application to me to be admitted, after the required probation, to the ministry of the Church, has been transferred to the Bishop of Georgia."
In January, 1833, not long after his arrival in North Caro- lina, Bishop Ives visited the parish. of Saint James in Wilming- ton, the famous Orton plantation in the same vicinity, and the ruins of Saint Philip's Church on the site of the old town of Brunswick. "During my visit here," he said of Wilmington, "I spent a day or two at Orton, the seat of Dr. Frederick Hill, and visited the walls of an ante-Revolutionary Church, situated about two miles distant, amid the ruins of the old town of Bruns- wick. These walls are in a state of. almost entire, preservation ; and, by being newly roofed and repaired, would still furnish a commodious place of public worship to the inhab- itants of the neighboring settlement. My intercourse with the congregation of St. James was most gratifying."
As his predecessor Bishop Ravenscroft had been before him, and as all succeeding Bishops of the Diocese of North Caro- lina have since been, Bishop Ives was ever ready openly to concede the apostolic origin of the Moravian Church. On sev- eral occasions he visited the Moravian settlements in and around the old town of Salem, and joined with their Bishops and other clergy in conducting public worship. After speaking of a visit to that community in the Summer of 1833, he adds: "I did not
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leave them without receiving additional strength to my former convictions of their great Christian simplicity, eminent devo- tion to the Savior, and love of all Christian people, especially our apostolic Church." Of another visit, nine years later, he remarks: "By kind invitation of the Moravian Bishop, I preached in his Church at Salem. I shall not soon forget the delightful fraternal intercourse I had with the brethren at that place."
In 1834, the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon . Bishop Ives by the University of North Carolina, he being the second minister of the Gospel so honored by that institution. Several years before that date (in 1831) he had received the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology from Columbia College, New York.
In the Spring of 1835 Bishop Ives was attacked by "an alarm- ing and obstinate disease," and obtained from his Diocese a leave of absence which he spent in Europe. While sojourning in Great Britain he made the acquaintance of many high digni- taries of the Church of England. This tour abroad prevented his attendance upon the General Convention of 1835, which was held in the city of Philadelphia. To the Convention last named the report on the State of the Church in North Carolina said: "The Church in this Diocese has its peculiar grounds of anxiety, in the severe and dangerous affliction of its chief pastor. . The Bishop is now in Europe in pursuit of health, while many and unceasing prayers are offered up that the Divine blessing may succeed this last measure in behalf of his health and con- stitution."
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