A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 67

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188

USA > New York > A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 67

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Cutting, the seats in St. Ann's are free. This gift removed all the indebtedness of the church and enabled it to begin a new era of active zealous Christian work. Its revenues are large, its field of activities broad, its methods liberal and its work has been singularly blessed.

The Church of the Holy Trinity might in a sense be regarded as one among the many daughters of St. Ann's, as its founders, Edgar J. Bartow and his wife (Harriet C. Pierre- pont), were long associated with the latter, the husband as an officer of and worker in the Sabbath-school, and the wife as an active in- strument in the charitable field which has ever been a feature of St. Ann's. Mr. Bartow was descended from an old Westchester family and took up his residence in Brooklyn in 1830. In business life he was a paper manufacturer, but not a little of his once immense wealth came from liis shrewdness in taking advantage of the rising tide of Brooklyn real-estate values. Blessed with riches and animated by a sincere desire to add to the spiritual blessings of Brooklyn, Mr. Bartow and his wife in 1844 selected a site for a new church at Montague and Clinton streets, engaged the services of Minard Lefever, the most noted ecclesiastical architect of his day, and erected a building which for beauty of design and general adapt- ability far surpassed any structure at that time in the city. Its cost when completed was esti- mated at $175,000, but no one ever knew the exact figure, for every dollar was met by Mr. Bartow. The church was opened for Divine service April 25, 1847, and the Rev. Dr. W. H. Lewis became the first rector. The entire prop- erty unfortunately continued in Mr. Bartow's hands, as it had been his intention to complete it according to the original designs. But in 1856 the embarrassed condition of his affairs- forced him to realize on all his available estate, and to his deep regret it became necessary to dispose of the church property, along with the rest. It was offered to the congregation for $100,000 and the offer was accepted. Starting out anew, as it were, under a heavy load of

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debt, Dr. Lewis continued his pastorate with much success until 1860, when he resigned and .was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. A. H. Little- john, afterward first Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Brooklyn. For a long time the finan- cial condition of the church was one of the wonders of Brooklyn. It seemed so burdened that relief appeared an impossibility and ru- mors were frequently heard that the congre- gation would be compelled to abandon its princely edifice and seek a humbler shelter. But wise counsels prevailed, the people held on, able heads managed the finances, and slow- ly but surely the debt gradually disappeared, the building was completed according to its original designs, with its beautiful spire; the rectory, abandoned in the time of despair, was repurchased, and its financial ability for ag- gressive church work was placed on an equal footing with any in the city. In 1869, when Bishop Littlejohn was consecrated, he was suc- ceeded as rector of Holy Trinity by the Rev. Charles H. Hall, whose ministry was one of the most practically successful of any in the fruitful story of Brooklyn's churches. He re- mained in charge of the parish until his death, Sept. 12, 1895. The present pastor is the Rev. S. D. McConnell. The membership is now over 1,100, and the church property is valued at $400,000, while not a penny of debt rests upon it.

The third church selected tells us another story of advancement and illustrates a different method of Christian work and church up- building, and it brings before us a zealous la- borer in the vineyard, one whose name and works are not, it is to be feared, as widely re- membered in Brooklyn as they ought to be. Until the day of his death, in 1865, no person- ality was better known or more kindly regard- ed in the city than that of the Rev. Evan John- son. He was born at Newport, R. I., June 6, 1792, and was there ordained in 1813. After a brief service as curate in Grace Church, New York City, he became rector of the Episcopal Church at Newtown, Long Island, in 1814.

The same year he married Maria, daughter of John B. Johnson. Through her he acquired some property, and for a number of years he not only attended faithfully to the duties of his church but managed successfully the affairs of a large farm which he owned. After his wife's death, in 1825, he determined to remove from Newtown, and, selling his farm for $4,000, he settled, in the following year, 1826, in Brooklyn, where at his own expense he bought land and erected St. John's Church. To the congregation he gathered there he minis- tered for twenty years, seeing it steadily grow- ing in membership and usefulness, but all the time decl ning to accept a cent for his services. Indeed it was his boast in his latter days that he had preached and filled all the duties of a pastorate for forty years without any monetary remuneration ! In 1847, finding that St. John's was self-supporting, he sold the building and ground to the congregation and with the money thus received proceeded to put in oper- ation a project he had long cherished,-the erection of another church in a section of the city where poverty abounded and religion did not. Hiring a room in Jackson street, he com- menced holding Divine services in that small apartment in September, 1847. This was the beginning of St. Michael's. The congregation grew so rapidly that in a few months he was able to lease the old Eastern Market building, on High street. There the church and parish were duly incorporated and in time a self-sup- porting and vigorous congregation was added to the list of the successful Episcopal Churches in Brooklyn. It now occupies an elegant build- ing erected for its use on High street, and this, with the adjoining rectory, is estimated as worth $100,000. The church has 480 mem- bers, no indebtedness, and raises annually about $16,000 for church work.

During the period covered by this chapter the Reformed Church added seven churches to its number, the Lutherans four, the Meth- odist Episcopal twelve, the Baptists twelve, the Congregational nine, the Presbyterians

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eight, while the Roman Catholic Church added sixteen. These figures indicate a vast amount of activity, and practically every section of the city found itself more or less fully covered by church influence. The field was large, the workers were many,-so many in fact that it is beyond the scope of this work even to attempt to recall their names. Almost any selection that could be made would be unjust to those omitted, but it may be said that there was not a better body, a more self-denying body, a more energetic body of earnest, devoted Christ- ian workers to be found anywhere than might be found in the list of Brooklyn's preachers during this division of its story. We read of little troubles bothering a few of the congrega- tions, we read of efforts made in the course of reaching out being unfortunate on account of an error in judgment as to location or an error. in calculation of resources on the part of en- thusiastic workers, and now and again we read of a pastor being compelled to stand aside on account of his health breaking down under the unceasing strain of his work. Such errors, such drawbacks, such sorrows, however, were unavoidable, and had but little effect on the general result ; and so, as we read the story of Brooklyn church life during the years between 1834 and 1854, we see a strong body, a nervous force, steadily reaching out in all directions and leavening the whole into a Christian com- munity, a lighted lamp set as it were upon a hill and shedding its rays over all the land. For it was in this period that Brooklyn in real- ity became generally known as the "City of Churches," and its churches acquired a meas- ure of national fame.

Three men were conspicuous in bringing all this about ; and as they have all three passed beyond the veil and the value of their services was so pre-eminent as to be beyond cavil, we may close our study of the church life of the first City of Brooklyn by recalling some of the prominent features of their careers.

John Loughlin, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Long Island, was born in county

Down, Ireland, in 1816. Early in life he came to America, settling for a time in Albany, N. Y., and was educated for the priesthood at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmittsburg, Md. In 1842 he was ordained priest and be- came attached to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, of which, in 1844, he became Rector. He was subsequently appointed Vicar General of the New York diocese, and was consecrated as Bishop of Brooklyn October 3, 1853, by the Papal Nuncio, the Most Rev. Cajetan Bedini, Archbishop of Thebes. Bishop Loughlin named St. James's as his cathedral church and thenceforth his life was bound up in the his- tory of his diocese. Under him the Church steadily extended, new parishes were opened up in rapid succession, and schools and char- ities quickly followed. The Bishop was a con- sistent believer in active religious work, in work outside the pulpit, in the homes and the social circles of his people. To aid in such endeavor he introduced into his diocese, in 1855, the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Sisters of Mercy, and he crowned, as he believed, his church building work in 1868 when he had the corner-stone of a cathedral and diocesan estab- lishment laid by Archbishop McClosky, on a splendid site at the junction of Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues. It was designed to be the finest group of ecclesiastical buildings on Long Island,-to rival in fact anything of the kind in America. But he did not live to see the work completed. The buildings remain uncompleted even to this day, although a part of the cathie- dral has been opened for service and a palace for the Bishop's residence has been completed, a beautiful structure in keeping with the im- portance and dignity of the office. Bishop Loughlin continued sedulously to advance and protect the vast interests committed to his care, quietly and unostentatiously, but none the less effectively, until his death, Dec. 29, 1891. It may truly be said that on assuming the Bish- opric he gave himself up wholly to his work, and that the full story of his life in Brooklyn would be but the story of the marvelous prog-

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ress of his Church from 1853 until 1892. On May 2, 1892, the Rev. Charles E. McDonnell was installed as his successor. In writing of the personal career of such a man as Bishop Loughlin, the biographer is necessarily limited as to its details. A true leader in such circum- stances is essentially the head of a force, and while his life is spent as the representative of that force, and the leading director of its move- ments, he more or less completely sinks his personality in its direction. Such- self-abnega- tion, in fact, has been one of the causes of the modern success of the Roman Catholic Church.

But in dealing with the career of such a man as the late Rev. Dr. Storrs, his individu- ality not only stands out in bold relief all through his career but that individuality re- flects its own characteristics upon the church with which it is associated and gives it not merely local but national importance, an im- portance which generally passes away with its creator although the church to which he minis- tered may remain intact. To illustrate perhaps „a little more plainly, it may be said that the Church of the Pilgrims was better known as Dr. Storr's Church during that gifted man's life-time than by its official designation.

Richard Salter Storrs was descended from a long and illustrious line of New England clergymen. His father, Richard S. Storrs, was for sixty-two years pastor of the First Congre- gational Church of Braintree, Mass .; his grandfather, who also bore the name of Rich -. ard Salter Storrs, was pastor of a Congrega- tional Church at Long Meadow, Mass., for thirty-three years, and his great-grandfather was a Chaplain in the Patriot army during the American Revolution.

Richard S. Storrs was born at Braintree, Mass., Ang. 21, 1821. He was graduated at Amherst College in 1839, and for a short time was engaged as a teacher in Monson Academy. It was apparently his idea at first to prepare himself for the bar, for he entered the office of Rufus Choate as a student. He abandoned law for theology, however, and entered Andover

Seminary, where he was graduated in 1845. He became pastor of a Congregational church at Brookline, Mass., in that year, and in the following year was called to the Church of the Pilgrims, and was installed as pastor on Nov. 19, 1846. It had been organized only two years before, and Dr. Storrs was its first minister.

The corner-stone of the present edifice of the Church of the Pilgrims, at Henry and Remsen streets, was laid in 1844, and the build- ing was dedicated in 1846, several months be- fore Dr. Storrs was installed as pastor. Many changes and improvements have since been made in the building.

Dr. Storrs was a Commissioner of Parks of the City of Brooklyn from 1871 to 1879. He was elected President of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1887 and continued in that office for ten years, and was one of the leaders of the old Manhattan Congregational Association, which seceded from the main Congregational Asso- ciation after the Beecher-Tilton trial. In 1881, on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of his pastorate, Dr. Storrs was the recipient of a purse of $35,000 from parishioners and friends.

From 1848 to 1861 Dr. Storrs was associ- ate editor of The Independent. Much of his attention was given to the Brooklyn Mission Society, and for a quarter of a century he was President of the Long Island Historical So- ciety. He also served as First Vice President of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and as a member of the Amherst College Board of Trustees.

Dr. Storrs was married in October, 1845, to Miss Mary Elwell Jenks, granddaughter of John Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston, and a niece of Wendell Phillips. Mrs. Storrs' father was a clergyman. She died in 1898, leaving two daughters, Mrs. L. R. Packard and Mrs. E. B. Coe, wife of the Rev. E. B. Coe of the Dutch Reformed Church, New York.

The Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs was a his-

Rich and

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toric figure in the ecclesiastical world of Amer- ica. "His death," says a writer of one of the many biographies issued after his death, "re- moves from the American ministry one of its most scholarly lights, and by it Brooklyn loses a citizen honored and beloved for more than half a century. The last of an extraordinary group of Brooklyn ministers, he was not alone a local force spiritually and secularly, but a man of recognized importance in the entire Christian world. He was a scholar, orator, man of affairs, and a historian of authority, as well as pastor.

"Dr. Storrs represented in Brooklyn for fifty-three years the tradition of the conserva- tism and the rhetorical elegance of the Puritan pulpit of New England. During much of that period, in a neighboring church-Plymouth -.- Henry Ward Beecher stood for the opposites of these pulpit ideals, the radical thought, the reforming impulse, and the genius for impas- sioned oratory.

"In all his preachings Dr. Storrs kept in touch with the Scriptures, and their teachings were the foundation of his utterances. New England born and bred, he lived according to the precepts of the Pilgrims, and he preached as he lived. His greatness lay in broad and humane scholarship. Possessed of an alert and vigorous mind, he treated his themes with a delightful thoroughness and clothed his thoughts in beautiful and fitting speech."

Dr. Storrs's fiftieth anniversary as pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims-his golden an- niversary-was celebrated in 1896 by a week of general public rejoicing, in which many prominent men took part.

Dr. Storrs delivered what is regarded as his greatest oration on June 1, 1865, on the impressive theme of the death of Lincoln. He was a most prolific worker and the large number of his works which have been pub- lished give some idea of the energy and indus- try of his life. The titles of some of his pub- lished lectures and addresses are as follows : "Congregationalism ; Its Principles, and Influ-

ences ;" "Obligation of Man to Obey the Civil Law ;" "Christianity : Its Destined Supremacy on the Earth;" "The Relations of Commerce to Literature ;" "Colleges, a Power in Civiliza- tion, to be Used for Christ ;" "Constitution of the Human Soul;" "Character in the Preach- er ;" "The Puritan Scheme of National Growth;" "The Bible, a Book for Mankind ;" "Declaration of Independence, and the Effects of It ;" "John Wyckliffe and the First English Bible."

Feeling the approach of his end, and suf- fering greatly from enfeebled health, Dr. Storrs formally resigned his pastoral charge Nov. 19, 1899, but retained his connection with the church as pastor emeritus. His last ap- pearance in the pulpit was in April 22 follow- ing, when he conducted the services in com- pany with the Rev. H. P. Dewey, of Concord, N. H., whom the congregation, at his sugges- tion, had decided upon as his successor. His health continued to fail in spite of his relief from his pastoral duties and he gradually grew more infirm until the end came, June 5, 1900, at his home, No. 80 Pierrepont street. Three . days later his remains were interred in Green- wood Cemetery. The news of his death caused many regrets in Brooklyn; it was truly felt that the last of a race of Princes in Israel had truly fallen, and several movements for some tangible memorial of his life and public serv- ices were proposed and discussed. But these seemed to awaken little practical response, and the memory of this good man is likely to be enshrined only in his own works.

A still more famous, more popularly fa- mous, preacher came to Brooklyn in this era, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. It is difficult to compress the story of the life work of this gifted man into the few paragraphs which the compass of this work necessitates, and yet a history of Brooklyn without mention of Beech- er's work would necessarily be incomplete. He was one of the sons of the Rev. Lyman Beech- er, who in the course of a busy life of eighty- eight years spent some fifty years in the active

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work of the ministry and became one of the intellectual leaders of the country. Lyman Beecher, "stood unequalled," writes one, "among living divines for dialectic keenness, pungent appeals, lambent wit, vigor of thought and concentrated power of expression." This sentence might also have been applied to Henry Ward, the most gifted of his sons, at whose home in Brooklyn he died in 1863. All of Lyman Beecher's children became famous for their genius or noted for their usefulness. Most of them were in some way connected with Long Island, where, at Easthampton, Lyman Beecher preached for several years.

Henry Ward Beecher was born at Litch- field, Conn., June 24, 1813. After being pre- pared for the ministry under the direction and instruction of his father, he was settled as min- ister of a Presbyterian Church at Laurence- burg, Ind. While there, living mainly on his hopes, he married Eunice White, who survived him after the close of his life's journey. In 1839 · he removed to Indianapolis, where he labored until 1847, when he received the call to become pastor of the newly formed Plym- outh Congregational Church, Brooklyn. He accepted, entered upon that memorable pastor- ate October 10, 1847, and continued to be iden- tified with Brooklyn-its world famous citizen -until the end of his career. In his opening sermon he announced that he would preach of Jesus "not as an absolute system of doctrines, nor as a by-gone historical personage, but as the ever living Lord and God." and added that he included anti-slavery and temperance as parts of Christ's teachings. That brief system of theology continued ever after to rule in Plymouth. When, many years later, June 30, 1883, he received the congratulations of his fellow citizens in Brooklyn's Academy of Mu- sic, on the occasion of the celebration of his seventieth birthday, he enlarged upon it as follows :

"The inspiration which has made the force of my whole life I found in a vision of the love of God in Jesus Christ. It has grown larger

and larger with the sympathy which is natural' to my constitution, compassion of God, mani- festations of God in Jesus Christ, that side of God which is great, holy, beautiful, showing Him to have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way. I have tried to have compassion like Christ. The less wor- thy the object, the more it was needed. I went right upon the side of the dumb and needy, without consideration. I think it most heroic for a man with standing and influence and ability to give himself to them. I thank God I had a desire to work for His glory, when to do it was to earn scoffings and abuse and threats. When Kossuth brought Hungary to us, my soul burned. The wrongs of Greece made my heart kindle. Nearly all the nations of the world, all under the sword of the soldier or the ban of harsh governments, have aroused my sympathy and effort. I did not go into these because they were humanities or specious philosophies, but because it was Christian : that's all. I did it for humanity because I loved Christ. In my preaching it has been the- same. I have attacked governments, institu- tions, anything; never a denomination or a body of ministers. I have preached against the principles involved in all, and in my own denomination as much as in others. I have preached for the deliverance of souls, for clear- er light, for a plainer path, that the stumbling blocks might be removed. These things I have changed in only to grow more intense and emphatic : first, the universal sinfulness of mankind, so that it is necessary everywhere for men to be born again by the Spirit, necessary for a life to be given to human nature above its animal nature, and this only by the Spirit of God; second, I believe in conversion and the effectual influence of the Spirit of God ; third, I believe with ever-growing strength in the love of God in Jesus Christ. I know that Christ loves me, and that I shall go where He is. By grace am I saved, say I. The feeling has grown in my later years, and when under great pressure and sorrow that raised a strong

Atom Maro Becher

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sea, my strength and courage all came from this view-Christ loves me, He will hide me in His pavilion till the storm is passed. The sweetness of life is as much dependent on the love of Christ as the landscape is on the sun to bring out its lights and shadows. I never believed so much in the Gospel as to-day. My faith in it has never been shaken, except in the ideals. I was never so sure as now of its truth."

From the first, Beecher's ministry in Plym- outh was a triumphant success. As the late Benjamin J. Lossing said : "It has no parallel in the history of pulpit oratory and pastoral labors. Thousands were brought into the church during his ministry. Its audience room, always full, would accommodate 3,000 persons. At times more than that number have been packed within its walls. The membership of the church averaged about 2,500. Its contribu- tions to benevolent and charitable purposes have been munificent." Beecher was not what many would have called an orthodox preacher. He believed that smiles should follow a ser- mon as well as tears; he thought happiness as appropriate a theme for contemplation as sor- row; he believed in describing the joys of heaven rather than in painting the horrors of hell ; in fact he did not believe in the doctrine of eternal punishment, and openly declared himself on that point in a discourse preached in 1878. His manner was dramatic, his illus- trations were drawn from actual life, mainly from his own reading and observation, and he treated every theme from the standpoint of common sense, attempted in short to interpret the life to come by the life that now is. Creeds and dogmas, especially as the years grew upon him, he had little use for, and, starting out in life as a disciple of Calvinism, he so developed, as he said himself, that in 1882 he and his con- gregation threw off even the loose and pliant bonds of Congregationalism and withdrew from association with that body. In his church Beecher was singularly beloved and well un- derstood, and his word was law. He made it

famous, and from its pulpit he not only spoke to three thousand or more auditors at every service, but to an outer audience of many, many thousands more, for his sermons, care- fully reported, were printed weekly in a pub- lication called "Plymouth Pulpit," and so were circulated and read all over the civilized world.

Most popular preachers have, singularly, to meet a crisis during their careers ; and Beech- er's personal crisis came in 1874, when he was openly charged with immorality, the lady in the case being Mrs. Tilton, wife of Theodore Til- ton, a brilliant figure in the literary world of that day but now forgotten excepting for the history of this charge, which developed into one of the causes celebres of American juris- prudence. The case first came up in Plymouth Church, and there, after investigation, the charges were dismissed as without foundation. A civil suit followed, Tilton figuring up his heart losses at $100,000. The trial of the action, which continued for some six months, was watched with intense interest and at the close much regret was expressed when it was learned that the jury could not agree, nine of the members being in favor of a verdict for Beecher and the remaining three disagreeing with their view. But Beecher was acquitted at the bar of public opinion. The worst that could be said of him was that his own inno- cence of wrong-doing or wrong intent had sometimes placed him in positions from which rumor and slander might easily raise up flimsy tissues of falsehood, while his liberality of thought and disregard of conventionalities had brought him into contact with a class of people, some of them fanatics, some of them literary and social curiosities, and some of them people who, to put it mildly, had wits and lived by them. New York at that time was full of curi- ous people, and Beecher, generous, open-heart- ed, always zealous in his search for truth, was sometimes too apt to listen openly and serious- ly to their vagaries. After the excitement of the trial had spent itself his influence in Plym- outh Church became greater than ever, while

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 67

Author: Ross, Peter. cn Publication date: 1902 Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1188

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188