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 18
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Life on the Ohio and Mississippi was primitive in those days. There was much gambling and drinking. Schools and churches did not always exist in the settle- ments, but on the whole the population which was set- tling those regions was of good stock. Mr. Richmond thus describes the appearance and contents of a hut in the State of Missouri, at one of the wood stations along the river:
I examined the cabin more particularly. Although it did not look better externally than a New England hog pen of good size, yet there were two beds covered with white counterpanes, having curtains, etc. A shelf of books, History of America, Novels, etc., amounting to two hundred in all, I suppose; a certificate in a plain frame, of the first communion of the woman hung up, and other appearances of civilization.
The Indians, both the remains of the Chickasaws and Choctaws, whom he met at various towns along the Mississippi, and the Creeks, through whose territory
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The City Mission Society
he passed, presented, according to his account, a very miserable appearance. In North Carolina the mis- sionaries called on Bishop Ravenscroft, who was con- fined to his bed in his last illness. He "charged the Bishop against Foreign Missions" and "he charged me against my 'own proud and partial opinions.' " His at- titude towards missions was one not uncommon in the Church at that time. Mr. Richmond spent some time in Washington, where he had a large acquaintance, in- cluding among others Daniel Webster and his family. He met and conversed with President Van Buren and other notables and officials of the government, attended a number of sessions of Senate and House, and talked with the party leaders. The trickery and unreality of the political life thus revealed to him, superficially at least, seems to have impressed him very unfavorably, and he writes: "I am more and more convinced that political life is detrimental to religion."
After his return to New York, in 1830, Mr. Richmond obtained a leave of absence of six months to go to Europe with a sick relative, but no record or notice of this journey, if he ever made it, has been preserved.
In 1831 the Church in New York began to wake up to the fact that it was entirely or almost entirely the church of the rich, and the City Mission Society was organized with Rev. Dr. Wainwright, rector of Grace Church, as president of the Executive Committee, for the pur- pose of establishing free churches, or rather free chapels for the use of people of the middle class who did not find themselves at home in the parish churches of that day. Mr. Richmond does not seem to have been an active member of this society, but on his own account he commenced at the same date a work of similar char- acter. St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, of which he
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was rector, was organized originally to provide for the needs of the poorer population in that village and was always different in character from the more aristo- cratic mother church, St. Michael's. After the erection of the church building, in 1826, the pews were ordered to be rented, but evidently the returns from these rentals were very meagre, the only recorded receipts from that source being $53 in the year 1827. Now it was decided to abolish pew-rents altogether and turn St. Mary's into a free church, differing from those which the City Mission Society proposed to establish in that it was an incorporated and self-governing church society, while they were really chapels, not incorporated nor self-governing. In the year 1831, accordingly, the pew-rents were abolished and St. Mary's Church was made free, the first free church in New York city and apparently in this country. There are no records to show precisely what part Mr. Richmond played in this matter, but, judging from his general record of activity in establishing free churches, it may fairly be inferred that he was the prime mover in establishing this first of all free churches.
In 1831 Mr. Richmond originated another movement which was later to become of very great importance in the Church's life. The Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, a department of the New York Hospital, was built in Bloomingdale in the year 1821. Contemporary accounts describe it as the most completely equipped hospital for the insane in the world. But the know- ledge of the treatment of the insane was still very back- ward. The modern theory of treating diseases of the mind like other diseases, providing humanizing enter- tainments, social intercourse and the like for the insane had not yet been propounded, and in this country,
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GARRIT VAN HORNE HOUSE, MR. RICHMOND'S "RECTORY "
Rear View
FRONT VIEW OF SAME AFTER OPENING OF BOULEVARD AND 94TH STREET
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Mission to Insane
certainly, no one had, up to this time, undertaken to hold religious services in institutions for the insane. Bloomingdale Asylum lay in Mr. Richmond's parish, and he was not willing that it should remain without the sphere of his ministrations. Apparently at his suggestion and instigation he was appointed chaplain, and began to hold religious services there, finally re- ceiving, in 1833, the official appointment of chaplain to the Asylum. These services may be said to have been the germ of the Mission to Public Institutions in this city. In two of his Convention addresses Bishop Onderdonk, then Bishop of New York, refers to these services with great interest and high appreciation. Whenever he visited St. Michael's parish for the purpose of admin- istering confirmation, Mr. Richmond took him out to see the Bloomingdale Asylum and to take part in the services. How novel they seemed at that day is clear from the Bishop's description of them in his Convention addresses.
As a result of the work of the City Mission Society already referred to, which had by that time established two or three free churches, in 1836 Bishop Onderdonk, in his Convention address and through the columns of the Churchman (June 1836) urged upon the clergy of New York action by the Church of New York as a whole and the establishment of further free churches for people of the middle class. This was something which appealed very strongly to Mr. Richmond. Ac- cordingly in 1836 he asked and obtained from the vestries of St. Michael's, St. James's, and St. Mary's the appointment of his brother, the Rev. James Cook Rich- mond, as his assistant, with right of succession in case of his death or resignation, in order that he might be more free to devote himself to building up the Church among;
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the middle and lower classes. With the approval of the Bishop Mr. Richmond undertook to form a free church at Euterpean Hall, 410 Broadway. According to the report presented to the Diocesan Convention of 1836, Rev. J. F. Fish, a deacon, officiated at this place in the morning and Mr. Richmond in the afternoon and even- ing. There were then seventy-six communicants, and a church was to be organized on lines set forth in the letter of the Bishop in the Churchman referred to above. The title given this new church, which was never, however, incorporated, was "The Episcopal Free Church of the Redemption."
At that time Zion Church contained within its paro- chial boundaries Five Points, then and until a much later period, the most vicious and miserable section of New York. For one cause or another Zion Church had lost a considerable portion of its supporting membership and was just entering upon that struggle for existence financially which was ultimately to result in the sale of the site and the removal of the parish to a more com- fortable neighborhood, less in need of the Gospel. It had been running down for some years, so that whereas in 1834 it reported 120 baptisms and 39 mar- riages, in 1837 it reported but 39 baptisms and 12 marriages. But if, from the point of view of the self- supporting parish its position was becoming more difficult, from the point of view of the man interested in carrying the Gospel to the poor and needy, its position was singularly attractive. On the 21st of April, 1837, Rev. Thomas Breintnall, who had been rector since 1819, tendered his resignation. After some little delay, on August 9th of that year Mr. Richmond was called as rector and accepted the call, with the agreement that the large galleries of the church should be entirely
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The Experiment at Zion
free and that all the members of his newly organized "Free Church of the Redemption" should be invited to Zion Church, and should be given those seats.
Zion now for a time became the centre of a very active missionary work. In the Diocesan Journal of 1838 Mr. Richmond reports the organization of "The Society for the Promotion of Christianity, which has visited 1600 families and distributed $400 already in the 6th ward." Succeeding reports show a gradual falling off in this activity, which suggests that after the first enthusiasm missionary zeal was waning. Appar- ently Mr. Richmond had not felt altogether sure of the success of his experiment when he accepted the call to Zion, for he allowed himself to be continued as assistant minister at St. Michael's, St. James's, and St. Mary's without salary, but with the provision that in case of James C. Richmond's death or resignation, he should again succeed to the rectorship.
In 1842 Mr. James C. Richmond became tired of parochial work and vacated the cures of St. Michael and St. James, and Mr. William Richmond was again called to become their rector. He accepted St. Mi- chael's, with its dependency of St. Mary's Church, but declined to resume the charge of St. James's, inasmuch as he wished to continue his rectorship of Zion Church in order to prosecute mission work in the neighborhood of Five Points. So far as numbers were concerned, Zion was still very prosperous. In that year, 1842, 163 are reported as confirmed there, part of them, how- ever, coming from the City Mission free churches of Epiphany and All Saints. Three years more Mr. Richmond continued his labors at Zion Church in con- nection with St. Michael's and St. Mary's. By the end of that time he seems to have concluded that it was
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impossible to support this work in the manner he had contemplated. The church was not made a free church, as he had hoped at the outset that it would be, and he did not find among the membership of the church suffi- cient support for his missionary schemes. There appears, also, to have been a feeling on the part of the older element in the Church that the divided responsi- bility of Zion and St. Michael's was undesirable. Accordingly in 1845 Mr. Richmond resigned his charge of Zion, and returned definitely to St. Michael's church.
About this time a new work of church extension was developing in connection with that parish. In 1833 the Rev. James Cook Richmond, who was then studying for the ministry and unofficially assisting his brother, had started a Sunday-school among the colored people, of whom there were many at Yorkville and Seneca village, a miserable settlement of low whites and colored people, on the site of the reservoir in Central Park. In 1841 another theological student, Thomas McClure Peters, attracted by Mr. Richmond's reputation for missionary work, volunteered his assistance, and was assigned as a lay reader to St. Mary's, Manhattanville. In 1843 Mr. Peters went abroad for a couple of years. Returning to the seminary in 1845 he again volunteered to assist Mr. Richmond in his missionary work. In addition to St. Mary's he now took up the work which Mr. Richmond had already begun among the colored people at Yorkville, and Seneca village. Out of this work shortly grew All Angels' Church.
In 1847 Mr. Peters was ordained deacon, married Mr. Richmond's adopted daughter, and became officially his assistant. Mr. Peters had been very much influenced by the Tractarian movement and was one of a number of the clergy who were anxious to develop more fully the
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forms and ordinances of the Church and especially to conform in the services and the administration of the sacraments more precisely to what appeared to them to be the requirements of the Prayer Book. Among other things they advocated the use of daily morning and evening prayer in church, according to the forms set forth in the Prayer Book. Mr. Richmond, who was not in sympathy with these ritualistic and High- Church tendencies, proposed to Mr. Peters that, instead of conducting daily morning and evening prayer at St. Michael's or St. Mary's, at which there would be few or no worshippers, they should each take daily as much time as would be required for those services and use it in mission work among the poorest classes of the population, visiting their homes and conducting services in the public institutions or in the poorest neighbor- hoods of the city. Following out this suggestion, they gradually extended their ministrations to institution after institution, enlisting others, both laymen and clergymen in the work, and finally organizing the Mission to Public Institutions, to which reference has already been made. In laying down the rectorship of Zion Church, Mr. Richmond had therefore not given up missionary work, but merely directed his energies into a different channel. As the City Mission Society with its free chapels had undertaken to reach the middle classes, so by the new Mission to Public Institutions Mr. Richmond and his colleagues attempted to reach a still lower class, the absolutely needy, the unfortunate, the criminals, and the paupers.
In 1849 Mrs. Richmond died of the cholera. At this time, owing to the discovery of gold in California, there was a great emigration to the Pacific slope, first to Cali- fornia itself, and then northward into Oregon. It
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became necessary, accordingly, for the Church to send missionaries into that country. In 1850 the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society called for young men to go and establish the Church in Oregon, but there was no answer to the appeal. Then Mr. Richmond, who was now without domestic ties which bound him to the East, felt it to be his duty to answer the Church's call. Not certain whether this work would be permanent, or the mere temporary task of organizing the Church in the new territory for others to carry on, instead of resigning his cure at St. Michael's Mr. Richmond asked leave of absence for one year, Mr. Peters to take his place for that period. March 19, 1851, the Vestry of St. Michael's granted him, according to his request, leave of absence for "about a year to go to Oregon as missionary for the Domestic Committee of the Board of Missions." He at once volunteered and was accepted.
A great missionary meeting was held in St. Bartholo- mew's Church, Sunday evening, March 23d, to bid him Godspeed, in which Bishop Chase of New Hampshire, Drs. Wainwright, Vinton, and Tyng and Rev. James C. Richmond took part. On this occasion Martin F. Tupper, having been requested on Saturday to prepare an ode, read the following :
FOR THE OREGON MISSION
Push on! to earth's extremest verge,- And plant the Gospel there, Till wide Pacific's angry surge Is soothed by Christian pray'r; Advance the standard, conquering van, And urge the triumph on, In zeal for God and love of man, To distant Oregon!
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Mission to Oregon
Faint not, O soldier of the cross, Its standard-bearer thou! All California's gold is dross To what thou winnest now! A vast new realm, wherein to search For truest treasure won, God's jewels,-in his infant church Of newborn Oregon.
Thou shalt not fail, thou shalt not fall! The gracious living Word Hath said of every land, that all Shall glorify the Lord: He shall be served from East to West, Yea-to the setting sun,-
And Jesus' name be loved and blessed In desert Oregon.
Then Brothers! help in this good deed, And side with God to-day! Stand by His servant now, to speed His apostolic way: Bethlehem's ever-leading star In mercy guides him on To light with holy fire from far The Star of Oregon. March 23, 1851.
According to the letter of instructions (Spirit of Mis- sions, 1851, p. 215) issued to Mr. Richmond, dated March 26, 1851, his work was to be confined to the white settlers who were pouring into Oregon. He was to prospect, report on conditions, establish churches where possible, Sunday-schools where churches were not practicable, distribute the Prayer Book, encourage lay reading, and above all take up a claim of land and build a house which should be a mission centre,
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a home for himself and other missionaries until paro- chial churches should be established. The particular portion of Oregon in which he was advised to work was the lower Willamette valley, a circle with a radius of twenty-five miles, including Portland, Milwaukie, Oregon City, etc. His work was not to be extended to the Indians, of whom there were many at that time in the country, such work being reserved for later consideration when the Church should have been established among the white settlers.
The trip to California in those days was a long and hard one by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. Richmond has left quite an extended and interesting account of his journey across the peninsula and up the Pacific coast. He seems to have utilized his oppor- tunities for missionary work wherever he went. On Sunday, the 13th of April, he performed morning serv- ice on board the United States sloop of war Vin- cennes, Captain Hudson, then lying at Tobago, and afterwards at the house of Captain Forbes. "After the service I presided at the organization of a Protes- tant Episcopal Church in the Island of Tobago." The church was called the Church of the Ascension. Ward- ens and vestrymen were elected and Captain Forbes, the senior warden, " stated his resolution to apply to the Foreign Committee of our port for a clergyman and to offer a salary of $1500. This is prob- ably the first Protestant congregation ever organized in the republic of New Granada."
As this trip led Mr. Richmond into foreign parts, he was of course provided with a passport, bearing the signature of Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, which describes him as: "Five feet eight and a half inches in height with a broad forehead, hazel eyes,
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Church at New Granada
prominent nose and chin, brown hair, dark complexion, round face and mouth of medium size." That he was a handsome man is testified by the recollections of those who knew him as well as by his pictures.
He left Panama for San Francisco on the 15th of April and was ill with Panama fever most of the jour- ney. Nevertheless, he managed to take part in relig- ious services which were held every day on board the steamer, bury one man at sea and marry a couple. They arrived at San Francisco on Monday morning, May 5th, just after that town had been destroyed by fire; but, fortunately, he found a steamer sailing for Portland, Oregon, on the following day. Reaching Port- land, Oregon, Sunday, May 11th, by Wednesday, the 14th, he had gathered together the Episcopalians of that city and urged upon them the election on the following Sunday of wardens and vestrymen. Ac- cordingly Sunday, May 18th, two wardens and eight vestrymen were elected and Trinity Church, Portland, organized, Mr. Richmond becoming its first rector. A week later, May 25th, he held his first service in Oregon City, and organized St. Paul's Church.
Mr. Richmond found in the territory one clergyman, Rev. St. Michael Fackler, who had come there from Missouri about four years before in search of health, and taken up a claim (640 acres) in Marion County near Oregon City, and who was cultivating the land and holding occasional services. With his assistance he organized, by June 23d, four churches, of two of which he took the rectorship, and of two, Mr. Fackler, subject to the approval of the Missionary Committee, to whom he recommended the appointment of Mr. Fackler as missionary, which was made. By December of that year he had organized six churches, the last being St.
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John's, Milwaukie. Mr. Richmond also took up a claim of land in Yam Hill County and built a log house upon it. Life was very rough in Oregon in those days. Every one had to do his own work, whether it were building or cooking or sewing or tilling the land. Prices were exorbitant. The houses were log cabins, rougher than the roughest camp in which people spend the summer to-day. There were no roads and no bridges.
Loneliness and a craving for social intercourse are strikingly manifest in Mr. Richmond's letters to the Board of Missions, and soon his friends at home received a surprising piece of information. October 21, 1851, he was married to Miss Sarah Adelaide Adams, for- merly governess in his brother James's family and later organist at St. Michael's, who had gone out to Oregon to do missionary work, especially of an educa- tional character, about the time that he did. Their plan now was to establish a school, which they thought might ultimately grow into a college, on the claim which Mr. Richmond had taken up, making that, as proposed in the original letter of instructions, the centre and home of mission work in Oregon. The school was commenced with six scholars, March 16, 1852, but by that time Mr. Richmond was a sick man. On the 29th of February he had seriously exposed himself, riding all day in a deep snow and heavy storm, as a result of which he was taken ill and entirely incapaci- tated until the 12th of June, 1852. Under that date he writes to the Missionary Committee: "At the time I was stricken with sickness, I had a prospect of more success in my Mission than at any former period since I engaged in it." June 13th, although still far from well, he recommenced work. His preaching appoint-
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Illness and Return
ments at that date were as follows: "Portland, twice; Milwaukie, four times; Harris's Ferry, Mckay's Prairie, Lafayette, Dayton and Milton, each once a month. His purpose was in the spring to visit the valley of the Umpqua, which he now intends doing in the autumn." Besides the girls' school and the prospect of a boys' school he had one young man studying for the ministry.
In spite of all his missionary enthusiasm, however, Mr. Richmond was at last forced to recognize that his health had suffered too severely to allow him to continue his mission, and in the autumn of that year he was compelled to resign and return to New York. The exact date of his return we do not know, but on March 14, 1853, according to the vestry records of St. Michael's Church, he was again officiating as rector of St. Michael's and St. Mary's. His health had been seriously affected by the exposure of the Oregon trip, and while he resumed his parochial duties and mission labors with his old time enthusiasm and aggressiveness, he soon found himself obliged to resign one work after another to his assistant and son-in-law, Mr. Peters. One very important institution, however, resulted from Mr. Richmond's labors in those last years of wan- ing strength and failing health. Together with Mrs. Richmond, who proved herself a most zealous and effective missionary, he established the House of Mercy for fallen women. It was on this work that he bestowed his last strength and affection, and here he held daily prayer until compelled to take to his bed.
He died September 19, 1858. The record in the parish register reads :
Rev. William Richmond, Rector of this Church, was
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buried in the Church-yard between the Porch and the Gate on the 21st of September, 1858. Died September 19 (Sunday) at quarter past one o'clock P.M. Aged sixty years, nine months, eight days. The funeral service was said by Dr. S. H. Turner, Dr. B. C. Cutler and Dr. Henry Anthon.
His gravestone now stands in the crypt, beneath the Chapel of the Angels. His remains lie beneath the present church, and his grave is marked by a brass plate in the floor, while a marble tablet on the neighbor- ing pillar, erected by his grandson, William Richmond Peters, bears the inscription :
Near this column Lie the mortal remains of The Rev. William Richmond Rector of this church 1820-1837 and 1842-1858. He was distinguished for zeal and missionary enterprise and has left as his most abiding mon- ument churches and charities established by his labors.
His prayers and his alms are gone up for a memorial unto God.
"Those who sleep in Jesus God will bring with him."
Mrs. Richmond survived her husband seven years. The record of her wonderful work for fallen women and nameless children is contained elsewhere in this volume.
CHAPTER XI FOURTH RECTOR REV. JAMES COOK RICHMOND 1837-1842
R EV. JAMES COOK RICHMOND, younger brother of the preceding, son of William Richmond and Clarissa Andrews, his wife, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 18, 1808. He was fitted for college at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Harvard in 1828. He made a bril- liant record as a scholar and was Hasty Pudding poet and class poet. He was an associate of Edward Ever- ett Hale, Robert L. Winthrop, C. C. Felton and Oliver Wendell Holmes on the editorial board of the Harvard Register during his college career, and "The Rain Drop," printed in that magazine in December 1827, was set to music and became a popular song. In later life he wrote several poems which were pub- lished in book form: The Country Schoolmaster in Love, A Midsummer's Day Dream and Metacomet. After leaving college he studied in Germany in the Universities of Göttingen and Halle. In the latter university he attended lectures by Tholuck, the famous Bible scholar and commentator. From a letter to the Church Journal of New York, entitled "A Traveller's
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