USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 10
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Annals of St. Michael's
About the church itself there was also a small settle- ment. A tavern, now occupied as the rectory, stood opposite the church gate with a well and pump in front of it, which gave a supply of water to all that neighbor- hood. Next to this stood a blacksmith's shop, within the limits of what are the present church grounds. About this time St. Michael's ceased to be the only church of Bloomingdale. A Presbyterian church, now the Park Presbyterian Church at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, was erected in a wood to the west of the Bloomingdale Road, at about 84th Street; and a few years later, in 1867, the Roman Catholics built a little wooden church of the Holy Name on the high rocks westward of what is now Amsterdam Avenue at about 97th Street.
Generally the population at this period and for many years afterwards, consisted of poor people, most of them very poor; but here and there, even at this period, some man of means would acquire property and build a hand- some residence. At about 75th Street Fernando Wood erected a handsome stone residence, with very large and well kept grounds extending down to the river. On the hill at 92d Street, overlooking the Park, Mr. Henry Heiser built a large house with stables and green- houses. Farther to the north, at 105th Street, was the residence of Mr. William P. Dixon. He was a large landholder, who built many of the houses already men- tioned along Ioth Street and in the neighborhood of 104th Street. At that time and for many years after- wards there were still enough people driving to St. Michael's Church each Sunday to make it resemble, with its gathering of horses and carriages, an old coun- try church. These were the so-called " carriage people." Besides these, Bloomingdale Road was frequented on
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Backwardness of Bloomingdale
Sundays, especially Sunday afternoons, by another and a different class of drivers. It was the favorite Sunday driving course, and was dotted with road hotels, not a few of them once old summer residences. Some of these were notorious for their evil character, as road- houses on the outskirts of cities almost always are.
This was the motley condition of St. Michael's parish at about and shortly after the time of Mr. Richmond's death. Old Bloomingdale had passed away and a con- dition of chaos had set in.
CHAPTER VI
Covers the Rectorship of Rev. Thomas McClure Peters, 1858-1893 ; and Tells the Story of the second Church, with a Sketch of the Manner in which Bloomingdale was swallowed up in the Great City.
A T the special meeting of the Vestry called to con- sider the death of Rev. Mr. Richmond, Septem-
ber 25, 1858, Rev. Thomas McClure Peters was unanimously elected rector of the church. As he had already worked in the parish as layman, deacon, and priest for seventeen years he was no stranger, either to its people or its ways, and indeed his new office was only a development of his former functions under a new name. His rectorship commenced, as has been set forth in the preceding chapter, at a period of change, when old Bloomingdale was giving place to chaos and market gardens. He had in the Vestry a valuable band of fellow workers; but outside of the Vestry there were almost no communicants and none upon whom he could rely for substantial support.
Following the great panic of 1857 there was a religious revival in New York and throughout the country, and at first glance the vital statistics of the parish, compiled from the Convention Journals and parish register, 1 would seem to show that St. Michael's felt the influence of this revival in an unusual degree. In 1856 Mr. Rich- mond had reported 55 communicants; in 1857 he 1 See Appendix.
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THE SECOND CHURCH
About 1860 Group in Foreground: Rev. T. M. Peters, and Sons, John and Andrew; in Gateway, Sexton, Wm. Twine
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Revival of 1857
reports 113 communicants. There is, however, no corresponding increase in the number of confirmations, baptisms, etc., in that and the following year. In point of fact, as a study of the later records shows, the 113 communicants were for the most part from the House of Mercy and the Alms House, and represent an increase in the number of inmates in the House of Mercy rather than any increase in the parish proper. This is clearly shown by the purged list of Mr. Peters's first Conven- tion report in 1859. According to that report there were then but 20 communicants in St. Michael's Church proper and 50 communicants in the Alms House. The communicants in the House of Mercy are not included in this report. The next year 29 communi- cants are reported. After this the number begins to increase. It is the baptisms, however, which increase with the greatest rapidity. From 21 in 1859 they jump to 119 in 1863, the confirmations increasing from 8 in the former year to 33 in the latter. This was due not to a normal increase in the adult parishioners of St. Michael's Church, but to an increase in the number of institutions, especially institutions for children, under the parochial charge of the rector of that church. So, in 1862, Mr. Peters reports to Convention that one half of the con- gregation of St. Michael's Church comes from the neigh- boring institutions; and in 1863 out of 246 services reported as held 82 were held in the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, House of Mercy, and Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum.
The latter institution was non-sectarian, and the superintendent at this time, Mr. Guest, was himself a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Lying within the parish, the institution was early included in the work of the Mission to Public Institutions, in 1852, 9
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Annals of St. Michael's
and from that time on Mr. Peters used to hold there weekly services and instructions for the children, while on Sunday they attended the Dutch Reformed Church. Mr. Guest remarked that their interest in the week-day services held at the institution was much greater than their interest in the Sunday services at the Dutch Reformed Church, and after some observation and experimentation he concluded that this was due to the Episcopal liturgy, and that because of its liturgy the Episcopal Church was best adapted to children. So it happened that shortly after 1860 the children of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum commenced to attend St. Michael's Church and continued to do so for almost thirty years, until the institution was removed to Yonkers to make place for the Cathedral. Before they had attended St. Michael's long the rector began to utilize them in the service. A surpliced choir of boys, one of the first in New York, was formed out of their number, and an equal number of girls, not vested, sat behind the boys in a screened part of the chancel, and supported them. They constituted the choir for many years; and as a result of their service in the chancel of St. Michael's, two of the boys entered the ministry of the Church, the late Rev. R. M. Hayden, who succeeded Mr. Guest as superintendent of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, and Rev. J. L. Prevost, Missionary in Alaska. After Mr. Guest's death, in 1882, a memorial window was placed in the church by a number of the boys and girls who had marched down to that church under his lead on the Sundays of their childhood.
During the last years of Mr. Richmond's life increas- ing infirmities had interfered more and more with his work. The result was that as Mr. Peters, while assistant
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Mission Sunday School
at St. Michael's, was especially engaged at St. Mary's and All Angels', parochial activities reached a low ebb. According to the treasurer's report, from April 1, 1858, to April 1, 1859, the collections on Sundays for the ex- penses of the church amounted only to $75.37; $29 had been received for burials, and $4510 for rent. The church was, therefore, almost entirely dependent for its support upon its endowment. Of the collections for the poor and for various charitable and diocesan pur- poses there is no record in that year. The following year the collections of the congregation amounted to $ 1080.90, of which $276.84 was for the poor and $105.84 for the Sunday School, Mission to Public Institutions, and St. Michael's Free Church Society. By 1861 the offerings had increased to $1398.25 and by 1864 to $2368.53, of which $796.92 were for the poor and other objects within the parish, and $1571.61 for the Mission to Public Institutions and other work outside of the parish. The new rector had evidently begun to can- vass and organize the parish.
Mr. Peters felt strongly the necessity of educating the children of the neighborhood in religion and Church doctrine. In 1861 a committee of the Vestry was ap- pointed to consider the subject of erecting a building for Sunday School purposes, the Sunday School, such as it was, having been held up to that time in the church building. The same year the Rector reports to Conven- tion that a Mission Sunday School has been established half a mile away from the church and a room for Sunday School and lectures rented there; and at the vestry meeting of the following year the payment of $150 rent for the same is approved and the rector authorized to continue the mission. This mission was conducted in IIoth Street, where quite a large settlement of poor.
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people had grown up, and besides the Sunday School on Sunday, the room was also utilized for lectures and debating clubs during the week. Three years later this work was transferred to a building erected by the rector on land belonging to him on Bloomingdale Road, a little to the north of the church. In this move- ment to provide better educational facilities for the Sunday School and a work room for the parish, the Rector of St. Michael's Church was in line with the progressive movement of the day. In the earlier days Sunday Schools were held as a rule in the church galleries, the rector also at times gathering the child- ren about the chancel rail and catechizing them. A little later the basements of the churches were turned into Sunday School rooms. This was done at St. Mary's while Mr. Peters was rector there. The next step was the erection of a separate building to accom- modate the Sunday School; and by 1860 the more progressive churches of the city were erecting such buildings. Out of these Sunday School buildings were later developed the more elaborate parish-houses of the present day. The mission Sunday School in Iroth Street with its missions and clubs during the week, and following this the special Sunday School building erected on Bloomingdale Road in 1864 and used during the week for lectures, debating societies, women's missionary and industrial meetings and the like, were the beginning of institutional life in St. Michael's Church and the seed of the later parish house.
The removal of the Sunday School from the church represented, also, an increase in the ideas of churchli- ness and reverence. The Church of the Holy Commun- ion, consecrated in 1846, claims to have been the "first free church in this country; the first to establish early
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New Practices
communions; the first to establish weekly celebrations; the first to sustain daily prayers; the first to divide the services; the first to establish a choir of men and boys; the first to have a Christmas tree for poor children; the first to adorn altar and font with flowers."1 It was not the first free church, as will appear from a preceding chapter. Whether the other claims are literally true I do not know. Certainly Dr. Muhlenberg was one of the pioneers and prophets of the Church, and the Church of the Holy Communion has in any case a glorious record of work initiated and achieved. Mr. Peters was in close sympathy with Dr. Muhlenberg, and their views in many respects were so similar that it is not surprising that the record of St. Michael's should in much resemble that of the Holy Communion. The early Communion, weekly celebrations, and daily prayer were established at St. Michael's about, or not long after, 1862, when they were still counted as marks of an "advanced church." Christmas trees Mr. Peters had started while still at St. Mary's, Manhattanville.
In one regard Mr. Peters differed from Dr. Muhlen- berg. As already stated in a previous chapter he had been profoundly influenced during his seminary career by the Oxford High Church movement, and found himself in many things in sympathy with such men as the late Dr. Houghton, rector of the Church of the Transfiguration, whose ministrations in Bellevue Hos- pital also commended him to Mr. Peters. How highly the latter esteemed Dr. Houghton is shown by the fact that when the school established by him at Manhattan- ville was discontinued, he sent his sons and such others of the scholars in that school as he could influence co the similar parish school for pay pupils at the Church
1 Centennial History of the Diocese of New York.
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Annals of St. Michael's
of the Transfiguration. Dr. Houghton was perhaps the first clergyman to establish in his church the daily Communion. This Mr. Peters never introduced, but he laid great stress on the sacramental life, and intro- duced eucharistic vestments, altar lights, and process- ional and altar crosses, at a time when these things were considered as rather doubtful and dangerous inno- vations. He was not a Ritualist, however, in the sense that he used ritual for its own sake. It was valuable in his estimation only in so far as it promoted greater reverence and intelligence in worship. He never in- troduced new practices merely because he liked them. He consulted the needs and desires of the worshippers in such a manner that whatever was introduced did not come to them as new and strange, requiring explana- tion and instruction, but as something which they had themselves desired and which corresponded to their needs and their intelligence. He was liberal and cath- olic, not rigid and sectarian; he did not undertake to make all worship in precisely the same manner, but endeavored to provide services differing in character, so that, as he wrote, all might have "the opportunity to worship at a time and in such a manner as they might elect." The Church was not his; he was the serv- ant of the worshippers, whose duty it was to keep in touch with new movements in worship, as in everything else, and to mediate them to his people according to their needs. New as some of the things introduced at St. Michael's were in their day they never aroused opposition or even serious criticism. They met the needs of the worshippers, and Churchmen of opposite parties, and even, during his ministry, when there were few churches of other denominations easily accessible, communicants of different churches, from Roman
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War Times
Catholic, on the one side, to Methodist, on the other, might be found amicably kneeling together at the chancel rail to receive the Sacrament.
Mr. Peters had not been rector many years when the war broke out. Party feeling ran high in the nation and made itself felt in the Church. There were all diversities of political creeds in St. Michael's Church, from copperhead to abolitionist. Two of the mayors of that period, representing hostile factions, Fernando Wood and Daniel F. Tiemann, were at the same time parishioners of St. Michael's. Mr. Peters was himself what was called a "War Democrat," loyal to the Gov- ernment, supporting its war measures, but out of sym- pathy with the abolitionists on one side and the extreme States' rights Democrats on the other. Unable to go to the front himself, on account of his missionary and family obligations, he voluntarily provided a substitute. His house was also the centre of work for the soldiers in the field, and the present writer can well remember those meetings, with tables running the length of the great hall, and women around them cutting, sewing, rolling bandages; the thrill of excitement when some soldier appeared in uniform; the letters from soldier husbands, sons, and brothers that were passed from hand to hand; the anxious strained faces of some and the mourning weeds of others. In his report to the Convention of 1861 Mr. Peters mentions the fact that a German service for the benefit of a regiment encamped near by, recruiting and drilling, preparatory to being sent to the front, was held at eight o'clock each Sunday morning at St. Michael's Church. And yet with all his patriotism, politics never seemed to enter the church building. Copperhead and abolitionist worshipped to- gether in peace and harmony, all party strife seemingly
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Annals of St. Michael's
laid aside at the doors of the sanctuary. Besides the attendance of the soldiers at the early service, and the occasional presence of a uniformed man in the congre- gation, the present writer can recall no other visible token of the war within the church until the death of Lincoln, when the little building was all draped in solemn black. In the Vestry records, however, there is curious evidence of the war, and of the need of income which led the Government to tax everything in sight, in the shape of a revenue stamp attached to the report of each meeting.
New York suffered terribly in those days. One sixth of the able-bodied male population of the city is said to have been in the army or navy at one time, and the population fell from 813,699 in 1860 to 726,836 in 1865. Bloomingdale suffered with the rest of the city, and in spite of the increase in baptisms and confirma- tions due to the institutions, the number of communi- cants and of families connected with the church remains for some time practically stationary. Financially, the Church seems on first consultation of the records not to have suffered. The increase of the collections, the mission Sunday School in Ioth Street, and the erection of a Sunday School building near the church have been already noted. In 1863 Rev. J. D. Reid, teacher in the Manhattanville school, above referred to, was ap- pointed assistant minister at a salary of $250. In 1864 gas was introduced into the church, and at the same time the rector's salary was increased to $3500, on account of "the increased cost of living," the sexton's salary to $200, and the music appropriation to $500. But a further study of the records of later years shows that all was not so prosperous as these items suggest. The debt incurred at the time of the construction of
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Missionary Enterprises
the second church remained unpaid and unreduced during this period, as did the debt on the cemetery.
Strangely enough it was during these very war years that Mr. Peters laid, in close connection with his paro- chial work, the foundations of his great missionary and benevolent enterprises. After Mr. Richmond's death, it fell to him to assist and advise Mrs. Richmond in her work for saving fallen and unfortunate women. In 1863 he took over the care of the House of Mercy, then located at 86th Street and the North River, put- ting the same under the charge of the " Sisters." This set Mrs. Richmond free to take, in consultation with the Rector of St. Michael's, a further step, namely, to establish the Home for Homeless Women, into which might be received not merely those committed by the courts, but also such as were left without a lodging and needed shelter for a night or two. This was located at 304 Mulberry Street, close to Five Points, the very region in which Mr. Richmond had labored when rector of Zion Church.
In the next year, at the suggestion of Mr. Peters, the Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society, which had died, and, as it was supposed, been buried, in 1847, was revived to take up the work of the Mission to Public Institutions, organized by Mr. Peters and Mr. Richmond, Mr. Peters becoming the chairman of the Executive Committee and practical head of the new society. The following year this society took over Mrs. Richmond's Home for the Homeless, rechristening it St. Barnabas's House, and set Mrs. Richmond free to take still another step in her rescue work for women, namely the estab- lishment of a home to care for husbandless mothers and fatherless children, saving the former from a life of shame and the latter from present misery and the pros-
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Annals of St. Michael's
pect of an early death. To establish this she came back into the territorial limits of St. Michael's parish, and with the advice and support of the rector of that parish, founded in the old colonial mansion of Nicholas Jones, then known as Woodlawn, at 106th and 107th streets and what is now Broadway, "The New York Infant Asylum."
Besides these institutions for women, in which Mr. Peters had collaborated with Mrs. Richmond, he him- self established, in 1864, the Sheltering Arms, to care for deserted children for whom there was no other institution. For this purpose, as narrated elsewhere, he gave up his own house, moving into the old Whitlock house at Iroth Street and Bloomingdale Road. In his Convention address of 1865, Bishop Horatio Potter thus refers to this institution:
On Thursday, the 6th day of Oct. 1864, I assisted at Bloomingdale, N. Y., at the opening of the institution of the "Sheltering Arms" for friendless, destitute children. In this case, a clergyman of the Diocese, the Rev. T. M. Peters, Rector of St. Michael's, Bloomingdale, removed from a spacious dwelling having ample grounds, his private property, and dedicated the place to one of the most touch- ing and important charities ever established in this City. It is for children who may be worse than orphans through the misconduct of their parents. May the dwelling which he has so generously devoted to a sacred use be the happy home of the once wretched and neglected for long years to come, the birthplace of new thoughts and new affections, and the germ of a gracious instrumentality destined to grow and enlarge its means and its influence beyond all present hope. It is under the care of two of the "Sisters."
In 1865 St. Barnabas House was also placed in the
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A Sisterhood
charge of the Sisters. They were as yet, however, only "Sisters" by courtesy. But now Dr. Peters (in 1865 Trinity College bestowed upon him the degree of S. T. D.) took a new and very bold step forward, as narrated more fully elsewhere. Carrying out the earnest desire of the "Sisters" themselves he proposed to the Bishop the formal creation of a Sisterhood recognized by the Church, and suggested the reference of this proposition to a Committee of Advice. The result was the setting aside or ordination in St. Michael's Church in 1865 by Bishop Horatio Potter of five Sisters, consecrated to a life of prayer and service. It was the first time such a service had been held in the English-speaking Protest- ant Church since the Reformation.1 The Bishop thus refers to this service in his Convention address of 1865 :
In my address to the last Convention it was mentioned that the internal care and management of the "House of Mercy " were in the hands of several of those " Sisters" who were formerly in St. Luke's Hospital. Three others have been added to their number, and they are now dividing their services between the "House of Mercy," the "Shel- tering Arms," an institution opened a few days after the last Convention and designed for the care of children who are friendless and destitute, though not without parents, and "St. Barnabas' House" in Mulberry Street, in this city, which is a house of reception in connection with the House of Mercy. As these Sisters desired to place them- selves immediately under Episcopal supervision, and as the subject was one of some delicacy as well as difficulty, I ap-
1 Besides the work in the institutions the Sisters also acted at that time as district nurses. It is characteristic of the attitude of charitable workers in those days and the ignorance regarding germ diseases that Sister, afterwards Mother Harriet, came to the church for her ordination from the bedside of a smallpox patient, returning to her patient immediately after the ceremony.
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Annals of St. Michael's
pointed an able committee of Clergymen, and drew up for their consideration a number of questions touching the special employment of single women in works of piety and charity, and the organization of such persons into an association. They presented to me an elaborate and instruc- tive report; and having taken some time for consideration, I proceeded to receive and sanction the offering which these earnest Christian women so much desired to make in the especial and exclusive dedication of themselves under the guidance and sanction of the Church, to works of piety and charity. I need scarcely say that in the Association there are no irrevocable vows, no engagements which could inter- fere to prevent their return to ordinary positions in life, should any claim of duty from friends or relatives un- expectedly arise to require it. In the meantime, they have the aid and comfort of mutual society and counsel, they have a recognized and protected position, they have the strength and consolation that comes from feeling that they are wholly dedicated to a holy work, and they are so sequestered from trivial cares and interruptions that they can give themselves with tenfold efficiency to their labors of love.
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