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 21
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34
Thomas was the only one of the boys who desired to study for a learned profession. In 1837, at the age of sixteen, he was sent to Yale College, for orthodox boys in those days were not sent to Harvard, and the Peters family were all orthodox. Peters's principal out-of- door amusement at college, as throughout life, was walking. Sometimes with one or two or more comrades, but more often alone, he took long tramps over the hills and through the beautiful country around New Haven. On these tramps he usually carried with him small pocket editions of English and classical authors. I have Cowper, Milton's Paradise Lost, Young's Night
286
Annals of St. Michael's
Thoughts, Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, a Horace and a Homer's Iliad, which bear evidences of use in this manner. He was also fond of horseback-riding (to which in later life he added driving a good horse or horses), and much given to swimming, especially in the night. He seems to have seen little of college scrapes and escapades. He had few intimate friends in college, but that he was fond of his classmates and always cherished the memories of his college life is shown by his constant attendance through life at class meetings and the pleasant relations which he maintained with not a few of his former classmates. A letter from one of these gives a pleasing picture of their relations in college days, and an amusingly characteris- tic glimpse of Peters:
Now, Thomas, the thought of you has brought back that wood fire and those shag barks and led me to talk as merrily as though you were sitting by cracking your nuts and jokes until some sober reflection led you to utter a little sage advice in a sudden and unexpected manner. I hope that ere this you have learned to laugh properly, without agitating your nether system silently for several minutes, and when others had forgotten the witticism suffering your mirth to escape in sundry singular cachinations.
Through his college course Peters was still under the influence of the strict Puritanical ideas of his earlier training. He is horrified to hear of the popularity which theatrical representations are attaining in Boston and rejoices that the Connecticut law forbids theatres. Nevertheless his father and mother and elder sister are always fearful lest he fall into laxness under the temptations which surround him. His father, in one of his letters, objects to his practice of writing on Sunday, which he believes to be a desecration of the
287
College Days
holiness of that day, and at another time Thomas is compelled to defend his purpose of reading Gibbon, which his parents fear may undermine his belief. His letters frequently make reference to his reading. He admires Young's Night Thoughts, Jane Austen's novels, which he prefers to Scott, Milton's Paradise Lost, Lamb's Life and Letters, Prescott, and Irving. He also frequently refers to printed sermons read by him. That was the day of lecturing and he makes fre- quent reference to the delight of attending lectures- John Quincy Adams, Bushnell, Pierpont, Shepard on "Conchology," Dana, the Boston poet, and so forth. A lecture by the last named on "Women" impresses him very favorably, inasmuch as Dana's ideas agreed with his own. Extremely conservative are the sentiments which he expresses in the letters of those days in com- parison with the liberal and progressive attitude of his later years.
In his Senior year the question of the choice of a pro- fession came to the front. His point of view in this matter was very high and profoundly religious in the best sense of that word. He felt a desire to choose the profession in which he could do most good, not that which was pleasantest or most remunerative. This he supposes to be each person's duty in life, but no one is compelled to choose that for which he feels an active aversion. "I think I should make a pretty good doc- tor," he writes to his mother, "but fear I should make but a sorry preacher. What thinkest thou?" Accord- ingly he began to make experiments with a view to becoming a doctor, but he was almost finicky in his aversion to dirt and to touching any unpleasant and un- clean thing, and after some conscientious and practical investigation he finally concluded, shortly before his
288
Annals of St. Michael's
graduation, that, although he did not believe himself possessed of the preaching gift, nevertheless, as he could not be a physician, he must become a clergyman. These two professions seemed to him to offer the best opportunities of usefulness and therefore his choice was limited to them, for his whole idea of life, from his earliest years, was the distinctly religious one of service.
Peters was always and everywhere religious, but his religion never took an emotional form. He was con- firmed in Trinity Church, New Haven, during the first term of his Sophomore year, in November, 1838, when he was seventeen years of age, but we hear of no re- ligious experiences or emotions. Emotional religion did not appeal to him. The religious surroundings of his college life were not altogether congenial, and in later life he sometimes showed a considerable prejudice against what he termed "Presbyterianism," which must be traced, in part certainly, to the experiences of his college days. He used often to speak of the narrowness of the College in its treatment of Episco- palians in his time, and of the sort of petty persecution to which they were subjected. While regretting sin- cerely that Trinity College was ever founded, and deprecating the policy of establishing small colleges on a sectarian basis, he used to say that it was the treatment of Churchmen at Yale, in his day and before, which drove them to set up a college of their own at Hartford.
The spring and summer vacations of 1841 Peters spent visiting in Washington and Baltimore and travel- ing in the south, the beginning of a series of travels which in the course of his life covered the larger part of the northern hemisphere. His diary of these journeys
289
Practical Christianity
shows a keenness of interest and observation, which was also to characterize his future traveling, so that traveling became to him a very important element in education and culture. His mother invited him to go abroad with her in June of 1841, but he felt it his duty to be present at Commencement, which fell in those days in August, and so declined.
In the autumn of 1841 Peters entered the General Theological Seminary, situated then as now at Chelsea Square, West 20th Street. In spite of his doubts about a theological career, he found himself at home at once and thoroughly enjoyed his studies, his fellow students, and his surroundings. From the outset he showed himself deeply interested in practical Christianity, in carrying the Gospel to the poor and needy, and scarcely had he entered the Seminary before he was engaged in mission work. Rev. William Richmond, rector of St. Michael's Church, Bloomingdale, St. James's Church, Hamilton Square, and St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, was already in those days well known as an ardent and zealous worker, who felt it to be his mission not only to establish the Church in all the waste places of the city and its suburbs, but even to carry the Gospel to the neglected inmates of the city institutions. Such a man appealed strongly to young Peters's lofty views of service and self-sacrifice in the cause of the Master, and he had scarcely entered the Seminary before he offered his services to Mr. Rich- nond and began to work under him at St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, reading services twice a Sunday, taking charge of the Sunday School, visiting he sick, etc. His license as a lay reader, from Bishop Brownell of Connecticut-New York, it will be remem- ered, was without a Bishop at this period, -- is dated
290
Annals of St. Michael's
September 27, 1842, but Peters actually began to work at Manhattanville almost a year before this time, in October or November of 1841, just after Rev. James Richmond had left on his mission to the Turks.
In the diary of his trip to Virginia Peters had spoken rather scoffingly of things Puritanical, but at the beginning of his theological course, although the seeds of revolt were planted, it is clear that he still continued to retain in general the Puritanical views in which he had been brought up with regard to the theatre, dan- cing, balls, and the like. He chides his sister in severe terms for going to see Fanny Kemble act. But al- though at the outset he retained these Puritanical views of life, theologically he began to react very rapidly from the Evangelical views in which he had been brought up. Trained in a religious atmosphere where beauty was banished from worship and all forms were regarded as savoring of popery, he began to display a great love of the beautiful in worship and admiration for a noble ritual. Those among whom he had been reared saw little difference between the Church and the Protestant communities about it. They cared little for orders, Apostolic succession, or historical continuity. He began to develop, on the other hand, a historic sense and a belief in organi- ization, laying great weight on Apostolic succession, orders, and historical continuity. His parents, espe- cially his father, looked with some distrust on the Seminary as a hotbed of dangerously High Church notions. In a letter, full of simple, religious feeling, he quotes to his son Dr. Alonzo Potter's views with regard to the Seminary: "He thinks your institution rather High Church, but thinks a pious man may not be injured by it." His mother quotes Alexander
.
291
High Church Views
Vinton, who regrets that two Boston boys are in the General Seminary and is sure that they will soon be tainted by Romanism.
At that date the Alexandria Seminary represented the Low Church as the Genera Seminary represented the High Church pa ty. After the commencement of the War, when northe n students could no longer go to Alexandria, Dr. Potter, then Bishop of Pennsyl- vania, established the Philadelphia School, because of his distrust of the General Seminary That Seminary was in fact a hotbed of High Church deas. The Oxford movement was at its height in England at this time and was already beginning to make itself felt in this country. Peters at once came under its influ- ence. The famous TRACTS FOR THE TIMES led him. to commence the reading of the Church Fathers, and. before he had been many months in the Seminary he had become a High and exclusive Churchman, paying. much attention to outward forms and entertaining the loftiest views regarding the Sacraments. His letters are very much concerned with points of theology, methods of observing fasts, the nature of the Sacra- ments, and other doctrinal questions. But if in these regards he reacted against the Evangelical train- ing of his early days, nevertheless the earnestness of that Evangelical piety had impressed itself upon him and made him from his boyhood onward religious. He is concerned about the religious welfare of his, family and his friends. His sister's confirmation fills him with great joy and he welcomes a proposition which she makes to devote herself to religious work, offering to see Bishop Chase on her behalf. On the other hand, he is much distressed because his family will not share his views of the Church and the Sacraments. His,
292
Annals of St. Michael's
mother has not been confirmed and he is greatly per- turbed on that account. The New England theology in which they were trained is full of errors and he fears the effect of those errors on them. His mother very frankly tells him that he has become bigoted, and both his father and mother are anxious that he should leave the Seminary. His mother is also disturbed on account of his practical application to himself of his religious theories. She is afraid that his fasts may injure his health; that he is over-working in the mission work which he has undertaken at Manhattanville, and that he is starving and freezing himself in the effort to live simply, as he thinks a Christian ought to live.
Finally, after almost two years of his Seminary life were passed, Mrs. Peters renewed her invitation to her son to accompany her on an European trip, and he accepted. They sailed from Boston in June, 1843, and spent about six weeks in Great Britain, with a brief run over to Paris, devoting themselves especially to visiting the English cathedral towns. Mrs. Peters returned home in August, but her son determined to remain abroad and travel on his own account so thoroughly that he might learn to know the languages, the people, and the customs of Europe. For this pur- pose he spent the next two years traveling and sojourning in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and the East, including Egypt (quarantine for plague or cholera prevented him from reaching the Holy Land), but above all in Germany. He was a most industrious and diligent traveller, seeing and noting everything, from paintings, sculptures, architecture, and antiquities to the systems of sewerage, burial of the dead, clothes of the women, and amusing incidents of travel. He wrote very long and careful letters to his mother and
293
Court Life at Saxe-Weimar
sister at home, which have been preserved, and he also kept a full journal of his travels. Sometimes he traveled on foot with a knapsack on his back, hob- nobbing with the people. Rain-bound, he once spent three weeks in a peasant's house in a village near Mayence. On the whole he enjoyed most such ex- periences among the plain people, but he was also thoroughly at his ease in court circles. Happening to meet on a steamer in the Mediterranean the Amer- ican Minister to Constantinople, Mr. Carr, the latter invited him to come to that city and appointed him an attaché of his legation. At that period young men of good family were appointed to such posts at various legations, to give them better opportunities of social intercourse and culture, a practice which was later prohibited. Peters remained in fact only about two weeks in Constantinople, but continued for many months to be technically an attaché to the legation at that point, a position which stood him in good stead socially in Germany, where he spent the winter of 1844-45 at Saxe-Weimar, attracted by the traditions of the Goethe period, studying the German language and literature, and having entrée to the court by virtue of his diplomatic rank. Americans were not common in such places in those days, and he enjoyed the special favor of the court and the personal friendship of the Crown Prince and his wife. The experience was un- doubtedly useful to him. The customs and manners of life, so different from those at home, the differing religious ideas and practices, as, for example, in the observance of Sunday, were of great educative value. Thoroughly grounded as he was in the principles of religion, the court life presented no temptations to vice, but enlarged his views, removed his provincialism,
294
Annals of St. Michael's
and helped greatly to develop that Christian and cosmopolitan gentlemanliness which were so noticeable in his later life. The change in his views regarding Sunday, the theatre, etc., showed itself at once in his correspondence, and his family were soon as much distressed about these new changes in his views of life and religion as they had been earlier in regard to the change of views which took place when he entered the Theological Seminary in New York. His father wished him to return to America, and although Peters desired to spend another year in Europe, he uncom- plainingly complied with his father's wishes, returning to this country in 1845. At the end of October of that year he resumed his studies at the General Seminary and his work under Mr. Richmond at St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville.
Although Peters had almost completed his second year in the Seminary before his European trip, and had lost but little study time out of that year on his return, nevertheless he seems to have preferred to repeat the middle year in the Seminary, thus making his course four years instead of three. He finally graduated from the Seminary in 1847 and was ordained deacon in Calvary Church, New York, June 27th of that year, the ordaining Bishop being Bishop Brownell of Connecticut. Two days later, St. Peter's Day, June 29th, he was married to Alice Clarissa Richmond, the adopted daughter of Rev. and Mrs. William Richmond, and was at once appointed Assistant at St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, under the Rev. William Richmond.
St. Mary's Church was at that time in a very bad condition. No vestry meetings had been held since 1840. It was heavily in debt. Its only dependence
295
Mission to Public Institutions
for income seems to have been the allowance received from Trinity Church, $300, reduced a little later to $200 annually. This was consumed, apparently, in the care of the building and other incidental expenses. No salary had been paid to the rector, William Rich- mond, and the arrears due him at that time amounted to about $6000, which was a lien on the church. Peters set himself to build up an independent parish, and, as is recorded in the history of St. Mary's, he succeeded in doing so. Much of the work at the little church he did with his own hands, often making the fire and ringing the bell to call the congregation together for worship. It was only in this way that he could secure results. He built a rectory with money collected from his family and friends. The German population of the city was then increasing rapidly and there were many Germans in the neighborhood of Manhattanville. Peters's knowledge of the German language and of German life made him an acceptable worker among these people, and for their benefit, in addition to the English services, he conducted German services at St. Mary's.
In the same year, 1847, was organized the Mission to Public Institutions. As narrated in a preceding chapter, four or five of the city rectors had adopted the practice of opening their churches for daily prayer. Mr. Richmond, always in sympathy with work and workers as such, yet not in accord with the theological sentiment of these High Churchmen, was nevertheless inspired by the sight of their readiness voluntarily to undertake the confining task, far beyond what was considered a rector's or pastor's duty in those days. While he had no inclination to open his church for a daily service, at which but two or three members of
296
Annals of St. Michael's
the congregation, and they among the most devout, could or would attend, he was not willing to be outdone in zeal for the Master's service, and therefore proposed to his assistant that they should each take from their days at least as many hours as would be occupied by the attendance of each at daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and employ that time in hospitals, almshouses, or asylums. This was a scheme which appealed to Peters's zeal and missionary spirit and he began almost at once holding services each week at the Colored Home in Yorkville, among the children on Randall's Island, and in the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, Mr. Rich- mond taking, among other places, the Bloomingdale Asylum and the New York Orphan Asylum. The work rapidly extended. Peters's methods were quite different from those of his father-in-law. He had essentially the gift of organization, and by 1849 the Mission to Public Institutions was well established. In it were enlisted the services of several laymen and clergymen, and the work was constantly extended; but it was not until 1853 that it was recognized by the Church and regular reports of the Mission to Public Institutions began to be made to the Convention of the Diocese. An appeal for funds issued in that year reads as follows:
Having for the past two years kept up weekly services of our Church in the Orphan Asylums, Bellevue Hospital, the Colored Home and on Blackwell's Island, I ask your aid in continuing the present work and extending the same blessing to Institutions which are now without it. The number of souls to whom for the coming year I hope to make our services accessible is about 5000. To affect this my own services are given at present for parts of three
297
Rector of St. Mary's
days in each week. One thousand dollars is needed to pay other laborers and furnish books.
THOMAS MCC. PETERS.
P. S. After this date a service will be held each Sunday morning among the 1400 children of Randall's Island. May 9, 1853.
Three years after his ordination to the diaconate, on the fifth Sunday after Trinity, June 30, 1850, Peters was advanced to the priesthood by Bishop Whitting- ham of Maryland in Trinity Church, New York. It is rather curious to note that in these early years of his ministry, before he was priested, Peters came very near giving up his work in New York to go elsewhere. Early in 1849 he wrote to his cousin, John A. Peters of Bangor, Me., afterwards Chief Justice of that state, asking him to use his influence in securing him the rectorship of the church in that town, then vacant. This position was in fact offered to him, and he declined it. Why he should have sought it, and why he finally refused it I do not know. It was certainly a great gain to the Church in New York that he did not leave the city to seek a smaller and quieter work at that period.
In 1851 Mr. Richmond obtained a leave of absence from St. Michael's Church to go as a missionary to Oregon, and Peters was put in charge of that church during his absence, in addition to All Angels' and St. Mary's. During his temporary incumbency of St. Michael's Church Mr. Peters was instrumental in es- tablishing another free church, St. Timothy's.
After his return to New York, February 24, 1853, Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of St. Mary's Church. The Rev. George L. Neide and Rev. Thomas McClure Peters were nominated for the rectorship, and
298
Annals of St. Michael's
the latter was elected by five votes, Mr. Neide receiving four. Mr. Peters was unwilling to accept the rector- ship if Mr. Neide wished it, and in a curious document still preserved he pledged himself to Mr. Neide to re- sign in six months if the latter so desired. Mr. Neide had been assisting Mr. Peters at Manhattanville during Mr. Richmond's absence and was occupying the rectory built in 1852. By the arrangement which Mr. Peters now made, Mr. Neide continued to occupy the rectory while conducting mission work in Blackwell's Island and elsewhere for the Mission to Public Institutions. This apparently satisfied him better than the rectorship of St. Mary's and he willingly left to Mr. Peters the difficult task of making that parish independent and capable of really supporting a rector.
In 1855 Mr. Peters removed from the old Van Horne house, where he had lived with his father-in-law up to that time, to the rectory at Manhattanville, and at the same time the Rev. Charles E. Phelps, a former class- mate of his in the Seminary, was appointed his assis- tant at St. Mary's and All Angels', with actual charge of the latter. Peters's own contributions to the work of St. Mary's Church were evidently large. There is a record, March 29, 1856, of a gift from him of $776.03 "for repairs, balance unpaid." Similarly he makes up the annual deficit at All Angels' Church. During the early years of his ministry his father and mother were in the habit of giving him considerable sums for his work, which he used in this manner and also for the Mission to Public Institutions. On October 21, 1856, his father died, leaving him a moderate competency, from which he gave still more liberally to these works. Indeed, so liberal were his gifts to the various church and charitable works in which he was interested then
299
Advocates Free Churches
and throughout his life that his friends and neigh- bors, and especially his parishioners at St. Michael's, regarded and often treated him as a rich man. He was in fact rich in his gifts not in his accumulations.
In connection with and in addition to the Mission to Public Institutions, it was Mr. Peters's aim to establish free churches throughout the city. To place them on a sound financial basis, he organized St. Michael's Free Church Society, which was to be the holding society for lands and funds for various such churches. To this was transferred the property held for All Angels' Church in the name of St. Michael's, and for this Society, in connection with Mr. James Punnett, Mr. Peter C. Tiemann, and others, Mr. Peters secured a piece of land in Manhattanville to be acquired, it was hoped, by St. Mary's Church. The debt on this property, however, was never paid and finally, in 1870, it was sold and acquired by.the Sheltering Arms. It is on this land that the older buildings of that. institution were erected.
Dr. Peters was a devoted adherent of the principles of the " free Church." In a sermon preached before the Free Church Guild in St. Ann's Church, December 4, 1873, and which had a large circulation and attracted much attention at the time, he says: "I entered upon my ministry six and twenty years ago, with the resolu- tion never to be pastor of any but a free church." His devotion to the cause of the free churches almost resulted in the establishment, a few years later, of a new Church paper in New York. It was claimed that the Church press was too timid or too conservative to be willing to give a fair hearing to advocates of new meas- ures, doctrines, and policies, and particularly that it would not give a fair hearing to the advocates of free
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.