Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ;, Part 2

Author: Peters, John Punnett, 1852-1921, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: New York, London, G. P. Putnam
Number of Pages: 578


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 2


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Another Royalist and officer of the English army,


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Annals of St. Michael's


who appears among the original pewholders of St. Michael's Church, is Frederick DePeyster, fourth in descent from Johannes DePeyster, who came to this country from Holland about 1650. He was a captain in the King's Third American Regiment. After the war he emigrated to New Brunswick, returning to this city, in which his family had long played a prominent part, some time after 1792. Here he occupied a dis- tinguished position both in the civil and religious life of the community. He was a vestryman of Trinity Church and the first treasurer of the Society for Promoting Religion and Learning. His country home was on the present site of St. Luke's Hospital, on the bluffs overlooking Harlem Plain. The house of his cousin, Nicholas DePeyster, stood at about 114th Street and Bloomingdale Road, and much of the land in that vicinity was in the hands of various members of the DePeyster family.


Michael Hogan, who had come over from England to this country, built and occupied the present Clare- mont at 125th Street on the high bluffs overlooking the river and the Manhattanville valley. William Rodgers's home, which later became the Abbey Hotel, burned in 1852 or 1853, stood at about 102d Street and the river, his property extending southward almost to Striker's Bay. Robert T. Kemble's property was adjacent to this on the north, and the entrance to both properties was through Kemble's afterwards Abbey Lane. Garrit Van Horne's house stood just south of 94th Street and west of the Bloomingdale Road, on the north side of a charming lane running down to the river. Later it became part of the Mott property, and was for many years the residence of Rev. William Richmond. In that house the present rector and


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FIVE ORIGINAL PEWHOLDERS OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH


FREDERICK DEPEYSTER . Upper Left) PETER SCHERMERHORN (Upper Right) JACOB SCHIEFFELIN (Center) BARON JOHN CORNELIUS VANDENHEUVEL (Lower Left) OLIVER H. HICKS (Lower Right)


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Other Pewholders


the present senior warden of this parish were born. William Jauncey's house, known as Elmwood, which will be remembered by many middle-aged residents of this region as Elm Park, a picnic resort at which one of the Orange and Ribbon riots of the seventies began, stood just south of 92d Street between 9th and roth avenues, on the present site of St. Agnes's Chapel. Near this, at about goth Street and Broadway, was William A. Davis's place, known as Ravenswood. John Mac- Vickar was one of the best known citizens and most prominent Churchmen of New York of that day. His place stood just south of the Brockholst Livingston property, at 89th Street and the North River. Baron John Cornelius Vandenheuvel, formerly governor of Demerara in Guiana, who had married a Miss Apthorpe of Bloomingdale, lived in a large brick house which he had built at 79th Street and Broadway. This was afterwards the Burnham Hotel, and has only re- cently been pulled down to make way for apartment houses. Valentine Nutter owned a considerable prop- erty, bounded by 8th Avenue on the west, running from a little above IIIth Street to 107th Street, and then southeastward far into the present Central Park. Nathaniel Prime, the first great banker of New York and counted one of the five richest men of America in his day, lived at 86th Street and the East River. The Rhinelander, Schermerhorn, and Jones properties were in the same general region along the East River. All of these men were prominent in the life of the city in their day, and most of them were prosperous mer- chants. Some of the other pewholders and early parishioners of St. Michael's lived on Harlem Plain, and the original parish, reckoned according to the homes of the pewholders, may be said to have ex-


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Annals of St. Michael's


tended from 162d Street or thereabouts on the north to 72d Street or thereabouts on the south and from the North River to the East River.


At the time St. Michael's was started the only other Episcopal churches in the city were Trinity, with its two chapels of St. George and St. Paul, Christ Church, founded in 1793 but not admitted to Convention until 1802, St. Mark's in the Bowery, admitted to Convention in the same year, 1802, the French Church of St. Esprit, admitted in 1804, and St. Stephen's in 1805. Outside of the city of New York there were in the diocese one church on Staten Island (St. Andrew's), one in Brooklyn (St. Ann's), four churches in the neighboring villages on Long Island, five churches in Westchester County, and about six churches in the Hudson River towns up to Troy; in all, twenty churches in union with Convention, with a few weak mission stations. There were about twenty-five clergy in the diocese, which comprised theoretically the whole state, and the total number of communicants was less than the num- ber of communicants in one church like St. George's, New York, at the present day. Ecclesiastically it was a day of very small things.


To turn from the religious to the secular: the total population of the city in 1807 was probably not more than 75,000. As to area, on the east side the city extended up the Bowery as far as Grand Street and on the west side as far as Leonard Street, but there was much unoccupied space within this area. The fashionable part of the city was Broadway below Pearl Street, with Wall Street and Pine. Nathaniel Prime lived at No. I Broadway, Jacob Schieffelin on Pearl Street, Oliver H. Hicks on Wall Street, and most of the other vestrymen of St. Michael's in that imme-


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The Embargo


diate neighborhood; and with the exception of St. Mark's in the Bowery all the churches were in that vicinity. St. Mark's was still well out in the country, and many of its parishioners were only summer resi- dents. So in the Convention Report of 1806 we read : "Communicants can not be exactly ascertained; in the summer there are usually from 120 to 200, in the winter from 60 to 70 persons." There were at that time nineteen newspapers in New York, of which eight were dailies, among them the Evening Post and the Commercial Advertiser.


In the political world 1807 was a period of great excitement and disturbance. In that year Napoleon brought Russia to her knees by the victory of Fried- land and reached the very pinnacle of his fame and power. Both he and the English Government, in their struggle for control of the seas, had so mishandled the commerce of the poor and petty United States that at last by way of reprisal and self-defence "the Embargo," Jefferson's "peaceful war," was declared at the close of that year. No ships were allowed to leave port to the great detriment and within the next few years almost the ruin of the commerce of New York, and not a few of the prominent merchants connected with the founding of St. Michael's Church were seriously affected in purse by this act. Internally the country was disturbed by the Burr trial, in which also some of the members of St. Michael's had a peculiar and per- sonal interest, for Alexander Hamilton's widow was a member of the parish as were also not a few of his dear friends and neighbors.


Thanks to these conditions the year 1807 and the next few years following were a period of financial de- pression and stagnation. The city almost ceased to


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Annals of St. Michael's


grow; but there were some men who even then foresaw in some degree the future greatness of New York. It was in our birth year, 1807, that a committee was appointed, consisting of Simeon DeWolf, Gouverneur Morris, and John Rutherford to lay out the streets of New York, a trust which they finally fulfilled in 181I by mapping out our present street system as far north as 155th Street. But to the majority of the people of that day such a street scheme seemed but an idle dream, and when the City Hall was completed in 1812, it was finished with marble on the front and cheaper sand- stone on the north side toward Chambers Street, because our city fathers and with them the majority of the people believed that the city was not likely to extend beyond those limits, and hence no one would see the back of the building.


In spite of the financial depression and the political disturbance, or perhaps because of them, for periods of financial depression and serious political upheaval are apt to coincide with periods of spiritual and religious activities, the year 1807 was peculiarly fruitful indus- trially, socially, and religiously in events of importance for New York. In August of that year Fulton's steam- boat, the Clermont, named after the Livingston home- stead, in recognition of Mr. Livingston's assistance, made its first trip to Albany in thirty-two hours. A little later in the same year the Phoenix, owned and invented by Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, was launched, but as Livingston had secured a monopoly of steam navigation on the Hudson through the priority of Fulton's invention, the Phoenix was transferred to Philadelphia. At this day it is interesting to note that Fulton made his experiments in Collect Pond, a sheet of water some two miles in circumference, and at its


I7


A Church Revival


deepest portion fifty feet in depth, surrounded by a "dense forest," occupying the territory where now stand the Tombs and the old Five Points, including Mulberry Street, and connected with the Hudson River by a canal, which is now Canal Street. It was a favorite skating ground in winter then and later. In 1807 also the public school system received its initia- tory impulse. Teaching began in old No. I on Chat- ham Street on April 28th of that year; and in the same year both state and city commenced to contribute toward the support of education. In the same year the College of Physicians and Surgeons was established. In 1807 the New York Orphan Asylum Society, with Mrs. Alexander Hamilton as its second directress, opened its first building, the first orphan asylum of the city. In the same year the New York Hospital was organized, which was a little later to build one of its most important asylums, that for the insane, within the bounds of St. Michael's parish; and a year later the American Academy of Fine Arts was founded.


The year 1807 and the years immediately preceding and succeeding witnessed, moreover, the founding of a relatively large number of new churches, especially of our own communion, suggesting a quickening of spiritual life and the beginning of a reaction from the long period of unbelief and indifference which marked the closing years of the eighteenth century. Out of the old French Church of the Refugees was organized in 1804 the French Church of St. Esprit; St. Stephen's Church was organized and its first building consecrated in 1805. In 1807 St. John's Chapel of Trinity was built, the most expensive and finest place of worship in the city in those days. In 1808 Grace Church was built by Trinity at a cost of $20,000 and endowed


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Annals of St. Michael's 1


with twenty-five lots of land. In 1810 St. James's Church was consecrated and in the same year the Lutheran congregation of Zion joined the Episcopal Church in a body, as the result of a movement begun in 1804, was incorporated as a parish, and began to build its first church edifice, which was completed and consecrated the following year. In 1811 St. George's Church was organized out of St. George's Chapel. Prejudice was still strong, however, against the Epis- copal Church, as the church of the Royalists, and the adherents of that church were still almost exclusively the members of a few old families, chiefly of English or Royalist connection, with their dependents. But the tide was beginning to turn. French and Lutherans were joining the Church, and the list of the first pew- holders of St. Michael's, with its Vandenheuvels, Van Hornes, DePeysters, Schermerhorns, and the like, shows the drift of the old Dutch families toward the Episcopal Church as the church of the aristocracy.


CHAPTER II


A Record of the Growth and Development of the Church and Neighborhood, with Reference to Happenings Political, Economical, and Social, to the Close of Rev. Dr. Jarvis's Rectorship, in 1820.


T HE attempt to secure the Rev. John Henry Hobart as first rector of the church failed, and for the first year of its existence St. Michael's Church was without a settled minister. Apparently occasional services were held, for there is a record in the Vestry minutes of a resolution to ring the bell at sunset on Saturday when service was to be held on Sunday.


The amount obtained by the sale of pews for the support of the church was found, from the outset, to be quite inadequate, and the Vestry resolved to take a collection every Sunday morning. The cost of the church building is reported as $4959.72, of which Trinity Corporation contributed $2000. Evi- dently a subscription paper had been passed about to raise the remainder, for, after the incorporation of the society, the treasurer reports that he is in receipt from Frederick DePeyster of the sum of $100, his subscription toward erecting the building. No other names of subscribers, however, are preserved.1 The


1 The names of a few of the early pewholders of St. Michael's appear on the subscription list for the erection of St. Stephen's, in 1805: Frederick DePeyster, $30, Joshua Jones, $25, William Rhinelander, $25 (twice), and Thomas Cadle, $5.


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Annals of St. Michael's


church itself was a plain frame building, painted white, with a small belfry, the common type of church archi- tecture at that period. It stood on what is now Amsterdam Avenue, and a long path led from the church door to the entrance on Bloomingdale Road. Be- tween the church and the road stood a couple of weep- ing willows, which are said to have been characteristic of the scenery of Bloomingdale in those days. At the outset there were no blinds to the windows, and among the earlier expenses for which provision was made was the purchase of blinds. Within the church was severely plain, according to the fashion of the time. One of those who worshipped there, at a somewhat later date, writes that in his recollection the old church


was furnished with high-backed pews, a lofty reading desk on the north side of the chancel, and a still more lofty pulpit on the south side. The chancel window was a fine piece of stained glass, imported from England, representing the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, with the motto: "May I not do what I will with mine own?" and was, I believe, a gift from some person who took this manner of asserting his protest against certain criticisms of his dis- position of his property.


An old guide-book, A Picture of New York, states the dimensions of the church to have been 53 ft. by 26 ft., which seems to be an error. The few who still re- member the church say that it was about the size of the present St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, which would correspond better with the number of pews contained in the pew rental record. It seated about 200 persons. There was no centre aisle, but two side aisles. There was no organ and no musical instrument of any sort. The responses were read by the clerk, who also lifted the hymns.


THE FIRST CHURCH Consecrated July 27, 1807


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The First Minister


Although it had no rector, the church was repre- sented in the Convention of 1807 by lay delegates, elected at a vestry meeting held on September 28th of that year. Early in the following year, before the members of the church had moved to their country homes, a meeting of the wardens and vestrymen was held at the house of Oliver H. Hicks in Wall Street, and Robert T. Kemble, Valentine Nutter, and Isaac Jones were appointed a committee to find a rector. The number of clergy in orders at that time was very small. The clergy of the colonial period had been chiefly English- men. The Revolution put a stop to this supply, and as no schools or colleges had yet been founded by the Church in America for the education of its own minis- ters a dearth of clergy followed. But the Vestry were determined that another summer should not pass without some provision being made for services. They were godly and pious men, quite unwilling either to drive down on Sunday to Trinity or one of the other churches in the city, or to go without religious ministrations. By a canon passed in 1806, “providing for the supply of vacant parishes," owing to the in- creasing demand for the services of the Episcopal Church and the scarcity of clergymen, it was ordered that all settled rectors were to take duty in outlying parishes. Acting under this canon, St. Michael's now turned to its neighboring parish of St. John's, Yonkers, and on April 30, 1808, the Rev. Mr. Cooper of that church was appointed minister until November Ist, at the rate of $300 for that time, and Mr. Jarvis1


1 No first names are given for either Mr. Cooper or Mr. Jarvis .. There seems no doubt, however, that the first was the Rev. Elias Cooper of Yonkers. The only other Cooper on the clergy list of the diocese was Joab G. Cooper of Hudson. There was a Peter Cooper recommended for ordination in 1790. Whether he was


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Annals of St. Michael's


appointed clerk for the same period, at a salary of $100, including expenses of travelling to and from Bloomingdale. If and how long Mr. Cooper officiated is not clear, for a little over a fortnight later, May 16, 1808, the Rev. John Vanderbilt Bartow, son of Rev. Thomas Bartow of New Rochelle, was called to be minister of the church at a salary of $500 a year, and it was ordered that the church should open for services " by the second Sabbath in June." Evidently it was opened at that time, for on Sunday, June 12th, Mr. Bartow baptized "Robert Birmingham, a white infant, at St. Michael's Church." This is the first entry in the parish register, and represents, apparently, the date of commencement of regular services.


Mr. Bartow was at that time in deacon's orders and so continued during his connection with St. Michael's Church. Technically he was never rector and he never had a seat in Convention. His duties appear to have consisted in holding service once a Sunday from April or May until November, and officiating occasionally at baptisms, marriages, and burials. The great majority of the baptisms, marriages, and burials recorded by him on loose sheets of paper, and now in the archives of this church, were not per- formed at St. Michael's but at various city churches or at private houses without the parish. Evidently but a small part of his time was engaged by his duties at St. Michael's. He did not even reside in the parish. His study was in Broad Street, and apparently he resided either there or with his father in New Rochelle.


ever ordained or what became of him, I do not know. There was a James Jarvis, clerk of St. Mark's in 1799, but whether he was the same Mr. Jarvis who became clerk of St. Michael's in 1808 I do not know.


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Memorializing Trinity


It is impossible successfully to conduct any parish by distant treatment, and it is not to be wondered at that, before the season was out, September 8, 1808, it was necessary to appoint a committee to solicit subscriptions for "the support of the church and the clergyman for the present year." This was not, ap- parently, Mr. Bartow's fault, but the fault of the whole idea and arrangement of the parish, which made it a mere "chapel of ease," a place at which a decorous and respectable sort of family prayers was to be held once a week during the summer, for a little group of well-to-do neighbors.


The financial condition soon became so serious that at a Vestry meeting called on Thursday, January 26, 1809, a committee was appointed to memorialize Trinity Church for aid in the establishment of a per- manent revenue for the support of St. Michael's Church. This committee, which consisted of Robert T. Kemble, Valentine Nutter, Edward Dunscomb, and William A. Davis, drew up a memorial which was adopted by the vestry at a meeting at the house of Mr. Hicks on Friday, February 3, 1809:


To the Wardens and Vestrymen composing the Corporation of Trinity Church in the City of New York.


The Corporation of St. Michael's Church in the ninth Ward of the said City to your Honorable Body most respectfully Represent.


That notwithstanding the liberal aid they have hereto- fore received from the funds of Trinity Church, and the very handsome and laudable donations or subscriptions of private individuals anxious to establish an Episcopal Church in that neighbourhood, a considerable debt incurred in the erection and completion of said Church remains yet unpaid.


That they have solicited subscriptions by which they


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Annals of St. Michael's


have thus far been enabled to meet the incidental and necessary expenses, and keep together their Congregation, which to many of them, and your memorialists in par- ticular, has been a source of satisfaction and happiness, inasmuch as some of them have large and growing families, whom they are desirous of educating in the doctrines of the Church, which it would be very inconvenient if not utterly impossible to accomplish, was it not for the present establishment.


And your memorialists are verily of opinion that the Church must languish and decline without your fostering aid.


Your memorialists have witnessed on different occasions the liberality of the Corporation of Trinity Church, and their anxiety to support and conduct to independence the infant Church Establishment, they therefore with confi- dence appeal to that liberality which characterised your respectable Body, trusting that in the exercise of it you will experience the pleasing reflection of having nurtured and established on a firm basis a house of worship in the vicinity of your populous City.


They therefore most respectfully solicit from the Cor- poration of Trinity Church, a fund either in money or land, from which a permanent revenue may be derived, sufficient to relieve them from their present embarrass- ments, and to enable them in future, more effectually to support the Clergyman and establishment of St. Michael's Church.


It is worth noting that at least four members of the Trinity Vestry thus memorialized were themselves pewholders at St. Michael's: John McVickar, Freder- ick DePeyster, Joshua Jones, and David M. Clarkson. There is no record in the minutes of St. Michael's Church of the disposition made of this memorial, but from the records of Trinity Church it appears that six lots were given to St. Michael's Church, two each


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The Trinity Charter


in Vesey, Barclay, and Chambers streets, and that in addition an annual donation of $500 was granted to the churches of St. Michael and St. James com- bined. At that date and for a long time thereafter, it was the policy of Trinity Church to make such deeds of real estate for the purpose of establishing independ- ent churches. It had given twenty-eight lots to St. Mark's a few years earlier. The next year, 1808, it gave twenty-five lots to Grace Church, besides de- fraying the entire cost of a church building. Some- what later, when St. George's ceased to be a chapel and became a parish, thirty-three lots were deeded to that corporation. Other donations of a similar charac- ter were made to all the older churches with one ex- ception, namely, Christ Church. Christ Church was a split from Trinity and was founded in 1793 against the wishes of the latter, from which it drew away a consider- able portion of its congregation. On this account Christ Church not only received no grant of land, but Trinity for nine years prevented its admission to Convention, which it was able to do under the terms of its own charter and title.


By its original charter of 1697, Trinity was made the "sole and only parish church" in New York City, and the famous land grant of Queen Anne was made to "The Rector together with all the inhabitants from time to time inhabiting and to inhabit the city of New York, and in communion with the Protestant Church of England." After the Revolution its cor- porate title was changed to read: "The Rector and Inhabitants of the City of New York, in Communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York." Trinity was, therefore, after the Revo- lution as before, the Church in New York City. In


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Annals of St. Michael's


the colonial period, when there had seemed to be need of additional church accommodation to provide for the increasing population, it had erected chapels of ease, St. George's in Beekman Street, in 1752, and St. Paul's, on Vesey Street and Broadway, in 1766. The organization of Christ Church in 1793 was, there- fore, naturally regarded as a schism. But gradually, as a result, apparently, of this schism, a new conception of its legal rights and moral obligations began to de- velop in the Trinity Corporation. In 1799, when the new St. Mark's Church was nearing completion, it was proposed to make it, instead of a chapel, a separate church, provided that were legal, and the question of the legality of such action was referred to Richard Harison and Alexander Hamilton. They reported favorably and St. Mark's Church was created and admitted into union with the Convention in 1802. At the same time Trinity withdrew its opposition to the admission of Christ Church as a separate parish. From that time onward for many years it was the policy of the Corporation to foster the growth of separate and independent churches. The Corporation appeared to regard itself as trustee of the church property, not for the one parish of Trinity merely, but for the Church as a whole, so that, as of right, when a new church was founded, some portion of its endowment was turned over to that church as its share of that property. The original charter of the church would seem to indicate that this was the proper view to take of the relation of Trinity Corporation to the Church in New York City at large, provided separate parishes were to be established in that territory. Trinity did not at that time abandon altogether the chapel plan, and indeed in 1807 it built the new and costly chapel of St. John;




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