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 24
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
entrusted by the Diocese the question of an ecclesiastical prose- cution, reported that Mr. Cowley had done nothing which would justify trial or punishment by the Church. Therefore, to the day of his death, although convicted of criminal cruelty toward little children, he remained a priest in good standing in the church.
328
Annals of St. Michael's
cent one, and one which, had he lived, he would doubt- less have carried to success, but no one else had the faith or courage to undertake it. For some years the boys of the two folds continued to live at Mt. Minturn, but Dr. Peters's other plans for the place were not carried out. At last, the city having largely dimin- ished its appropriation under the new State law, the whole plant was sold, the Mt. Minturn work aban- doned, and the Children's and Shepherd's Folds merged in the Sheltering Arms, which was continued at the old site and on the old plan.
Reference has been made elsewhere to the confidence in Dr. Peters's administrative ability displayed by the city authorities, which led them to make him for some time the almoner of city funds for out-door relief.
It would seem as though, with this immense amount of outside works on his hands, each one of which seemed to be sufficient to absorb all the strength and time of one individual, there would have been no time left for parochial work; and yet those who lived under Dr. Peters's parochial administrations never felt that they or their needs were neglected. He never seemed to be in a hurry, he always seemed to have time to meet everyone and converse with everyone; to call on the sick, to make the acquaintance of the children of his parishioners, to comfort and console the afflicted. And not only that : he was pastor to a great host of those who rarely or never entered a church, but who always sent for him in any sickness, need, or trouble. Of course to accomplish this work it was necessary that he should give all his strength and time to it. He did not believe it right for him to take long vacations, as is the custom of city rectors, and even of some suburban rectors at the present day. A little trip of
329
Writer and Speaker
two weeks, or a month, at the outside was his conception of a holiday. Twice in his ministry he accepted a long leave of absence, when even his robust health threatened to yield under the strain of work, namely, in 1874, when he spent a number of months on the Pacific coast, and in 1883, when he received a ten months' leave of absence to go around the world with his brother. He showed himself then the same keen and observant traveler as in his earlier years. His letters to the Sheltering Arms and the children of St. Michael's Sunday School made them sharers in the joy of his travel. He studied carefully the Japanese prison system and prepared a paper for the Prison Asso- ciation, of which he was one of the active members. Other shorter tours he took also on his ordinary vaca- tions, visiting most parts of this country, Canada and the West Indies. Once in 1881 he went to Europe to marry his son.
Dr. Peters was not in any sense a great preacher. He was a thoughtful, intellectual, highly cultivated man, but neither an orator nor a writer. In 1867 he is described as having " a pleasing delivery," and speaking every word with full and understandable accent." The same writer also describes him as "exceedingly modest" but "intensely persevering," with a "judg- ment thoroughly reliable" and "ways of working very quiet."1
He distrusted always his command of the pen and used to turn to Dr. Montgomery and other of his friends to cast into better language his reports of work of the City Mission, the Sheltering Arms, and the like. He was always a growing man, however, and the sermons of the last years of his life were far superior 1 The Northender.
330
Annals of St. Michael's
both in matter and delivery to those preached in early years. Sometimes in the latter years, when he cast aside his manuscript and spoke without notes, he took fire and became almost eloquent. He never was afraid of a new thought, and kept abreast of what the world was thinking and doing. For this reason he was counted by many a Broad Churchman, and he was a Broad Churchman in the sense of his Catholicity and modern- ness of thought.
In the earlier time, before he was finally overwhelmed by the multiplicity of his practical duties, he dreamed of writing a book which he called Progress in Creation, and for that he gathered notes. He also collected, apparently with a view to ultimate publication, a mass of notes on liturgies, a subject in which he was deeply interested. His lines of thought, like his tastes in literature, were both Catholic and unexpected. Besides these fragmentary notes he left quite extensive but very personal journals of his travels, a few stories and descriptions published in The Sheltering Arms Paper, and a couple of printed sermons and addresses.
It is not easy for a son to write impartially an esti- mate of his father's life and work. I have tried to sketch his manifold activities and through them depict the character of the man. Let me sum up the record by quoting from the memorial sermon preached in this church shortly after his death, by the Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D .:
It was a rectorate which had more than its length to make it remarkable; in fact it was long, because it was so rich. There could be nothing to tempt a man to change his parish when he was large-minded enough to see all the possibilities of the future, and to anticipate them with eagerness and fertility of resource, and to rejoice in the thought and antici-
331
A Catholic Man
pation of the crop while he was yet placing the seed in the ground. It was a rectorate of which others would not tire, since he himself was the one to anticipate each new emer- gency and to lead his people into new duties when he was seventy years old, just as he did at thirty. As the field grew, the man grew, and rooted himself more deeply, and showed no signs of decay at root or at top. He founded new churches and was anxious that every want of a grow- ing church should be met rather than that he or his parish should retain all its dignities or privileges. And yet with all this view of the future, he prepared for it by always liv- ing in the present. He was the father of his people in all their interests; he saw the children's children come forward to fill the places of fathers and grandfathers and he knew them all by name. He added to the duties of a scattered and ever-growing parish, services at asylums and institu- tions which were in his neighborhood, saying, as he once did to me, that such services carried to where the people really needed and could use them seemed to him truer work than to hold them where and when the people could not come. And out of that work for the neglected, the des- titute, and the demented grew first the Mission to Public Institutions and then that noble work of the City Mission Society by reason of which our Church stands foremost in going after that which is lost until it is found. He pitied the wretchedness and destitution of the poor in the sad hour of bereavement, and by the establishment of St. Michael's Cemetery gave comfort to a host of mourning souls, and a resting place to the Church's dead. He was the parish minister in the sense of the word "parish" which means the ground about one's home, and he was the parish minister in the old ecclesiastical sense which refers it to nothing less than the dimensions of a diocese. He worked at home with a diligence and thoroughness which overlooked no details. He illustrated the true character of the parish system, not as an embodiment of selfishness, but as the possession of a fixed point of responsibility and influence from which
332
Annals of St. Michael's
effort could diverge unlimitedly in every direction. And as he worked thus, the whole world became his home and his parish.
Perhaps no feature of Dr. Peters's life is more interesting than his relation to the currents of thought which, while he labored here, swept over the Church and the country. In his early ministry he felt the influences of the Oxford movement, and at once took not only many of its doctrinal positions, but especially and most notably all that it could give him for assistance in his work. Elaborated ritual, multiplied services, sisterhoods, free churches, all these were features in his ministry, with the desire of reaching a larger number of souls and of attracting attention to the Church's position and work in the community. Many features of Church life which are now familiar, or were long ago left behind by new developments with which Dr. Peters could not keep pace, were first in use in what was then the little known and obscure parish of St. Michael's. But closely connected, both in time and character, with this movement in the theological world came another- that which was identified with the names of Arnold and of Stanley, and with the school of large sympathy with new methods of investigation and statement ; and the advantages which all such thought promised Dr. Peters also perceived and claimed for his own use. He rejoiced, even when he could not sympathize, with men who found a new method of approach for divine truth to the minds of their brethren, and the career and words of men who alarmed others gave him satisfaction as they advanced the Lord's cause.
And not only theological thought and investigation, but the enlarged scientific knowledge of the day commanded his deepest interest. His reading on the street cars, as he went back and forth on his ceaseless activity and unnum- bered errands of love and mercy, was the periodical entitled Nature, and it surprised his fellow clergy, who understood little of the working of his mind when he presented for their consideration comments on scientific progress, rather
333
Achievement in Charity
than details of Church work or discussion of theological statements.
This was the depth of Dr. Peters's thought and nature. As then we turn to his achievements of charity and of philanthropy, which are the wonder and admiration of men to-day, we cannot be surprised when we find them not spasmodic efforts or temporary outbursts of feeling. This man who was moved by the sight, which all other passers-by neglected, of the blind child weeping on the steps of the City Hall, to begin a work for children which is the glory of New York to-day, once told me that he dis- trusted the use of that word "feeling," and avoided it whenever he was able to do so. He saw the need of our growing city and our developing civilization with its mul- titudes of bright but destitute children; it stirred him to his depths, just as by the use of that mysterious word which no one is able fully to translate, St. John tells us that Jesus was moved with indignation at the grave of Lazarus, and every faculty of body, mind and spirit responded to the call; intellect and activity were all there as well as feeling. And so he laid his plans deep and broad; he founded the Sheltering Arms; he rescued from misuse the public appropriations for the Children's Fold and the Shepherd's Fold, and gave those institutions a new exist- ence; he reorganized the failing Home for Consumptives; he reinvigorated the City Mission Society, which, with good intentions but little knowledge, had hitherto accom- plished little for the growing missionary demands of this great city; he enlisted the assistance of rectors and parishes, | and when, partly as the result of the very impulse which he had given, those very parishes became absorbed in their own growing work, he gathered together devoted laymen from all parishes, and utilized for his purposes material which otherwise would have lain idle. He calmly proposed great undertakings which appalled younger hearts and made the enterprising men of New York tremble. He took the breath of other men away very often, but always kept
334
Annals of St. Michael's
his own breath. He saw those enterprises which he had begun accomplished, only to come forward with some new plan, the result of the former, the outgrowth of their success, the sequel to their wisdom, and still more worthy of this great metropolis as a field of Christian work.
The wide parochialism of Dr. Peters went beyond the limits of the city in which he lived, wherever the Church which he loved was called to labor. The diocese and its welfare he endeavored to assist and strengthen by his strong advocacy of division. At one of the Church Con- gresses he pleaded for proportionate representation of all the dioceses in the General Convention, and the last of his many and extended foreign tours produced a discussion upon Foreign Missions which was full of helpful suggestions. It was impossible for any one person to agree with a man who made himself felt in so many fields and whose views were so decided on all practical points, and who so per- sistently held to a purpose when his mind was made up upon it. But he was the most modest of men, seeking advice from men frequently far younger and less experienced than himself, and friendship was never broken by difference of opinion.
Among those who stood close to him in fellowship of work and in deepest affection were men of the most diverse opinion, and from them all he was ready for every remon- strance and criticism.
In the midst of all these activities and interests who of us have not envied the calm, quiet demeanor, the steady perseverance, the perfect courtesy, the unfaltering faith, the devoted attention to details which never wearied or obscured the hold upon large principles. Doubtless, his natural temperament, which tended to earnestness rather than enthusiasm, was behind it all; but back of that tem- perament, interpreting it, vitalizing it, inspiring it, was the calm, unshaken faith in God and in the Gospel of the In- carnate Christ. He never doubted of the victory of truth and of good. He could labor and could wait, he could
335
Profound Faith
undertake all desperate undertakings, say all unpopular things, receive truths of most varied character, because the Master of all thought and action was with him and he ever felt about him the presence of Him "who reacheth from one end to another mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things." It was here that the power of his life lay for men of other characters and other pursuits. The strength that belonged to him never came from what he did or what he was; it lay in that living energy and wisdom behind the man which never let one particle of power, of inherited strength, of acquired equipment, of natural energy and wisdom remain unused or purposeless, but sent them for- ward in the service of God and of Christ and of the Church, without a moment of hesitation or of doubt. That uni- versal power he gave to men in his example, and in all the contact of his life, for he told them of the power of his Master and of theirs. On every side have been felt the beauty and the appropriateness of that death which was given him, for it does often seem as if God delighted to send for His servants just the chariot which suited their lives and natures best when He would take them to Himself. Calmly he died as he lived-not at home, but while doing the errands of the Lord, seeking the scattered sheep, the country congregation, the children in a summer home, but among friends, as he always was, he found the entrance to that road of larger service on which his feet now move beyond our sight.
He died engaged in works of mercy. On a very hot Saturday in August, 1893, as usual at his post, while others took their vacations, he went up to in- spect Mt. Minturn, and, after spending the afternoon there, was driven over to Tarrytown, from which place he took the train to Peekskill, where he was wont every year to go and preach in a little mission in which his friend, Mr. Field, was interested. He sat late on the piazza of Mr. Field's house, enjoying the cool
336
Annals of St. Michael's
air from the river and then went to a house across the street, where he was to spend the night. In the morn- ing he was found dead, lying peacefully, as he was wont to sleep, on his side, his face on the palm of his hand. The news reached the church just as the morning serv- ice was about to begin.
Dr. Peters's funeral attested the love of the congre- gation for their rector. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew kept watch with the body in the church all night. Bishop Coleman of Delaware celebrated early Com- munion for the family and immediate friends. At the funeral service proper Bishop Potter officiated, as- sisted by many of the clergy. The church was decked with flowers. The chimes rang out the glad hymns which Dr. Peters loved, and the choir sang the songs of triumph of the saints. There was no sign or symbol of the mourning, which with his firm belief in immortality and the nearness of the next world he so abhorred for himself and others. The church itself was packed with great crowds, especially of the poor people of the neighborhood, without distinction of creed. Bishop Seymour accompanied the body to the grave, and said the committal there, just as the sun was sinking to its rest. He was buried in St. Michael's Cemetery, which he himself had founded, in death not divided from those for whom he had labored.
His great outward memorials are St. Michael's Ceme- tery, the Sheltering Arms, the City Mission, and this Church. Here his family erected in his memory an altar bearing this inscription:
To the Glory of God and
In Memory of THOMAS MCCLURE PETERS, Priest.
337
Memorials
As a further memorial the Parish House was erected the first half by subscription of the congregation and friends, the second half by his eldest son. On the front, above the door, stands the inscription :
St. Michael's Parish House To the Service of God In Memory of THOMAS MCCLURE PETERS Rector 1858-1893
A wife and eleven children survived him. Mrs. Peters had been his helpmeet in the parish work. In her father's rectorship, when she was a child of four- teen, so small that her feet could not reach the pedals, she commenced to play the organ in the first church. From that time to the day of her death she worked with her father and her husband in parochial work. She died December 28, 1905. In the Chapel of the Angels is a window given as a memorial by the women of the parish. The subject chosen for the window was St. Cecilia, in recognition of Mrs. Peters's relation to the music of the parish. The tablet beneath the window bears this inscription :
To the Glory of God, In Loving Memory of ALICE CLARISSA RICHMOND PETERS Daughter, Wife, Mother of three successive Rectors. Her life was an inspiration to them and to the parish.
Dr. Peters's second son succeeded him as rector of the parish. His eldest son has been a warden of the church and treasurer since 1874. One of his daughters,
338
Annals of St. Michael's
Miss Julia Peters, who was his secretary and assistant during his lifetime, has since his death been the Parish Visitor, entrusted with the administration of the charity funds and the work among the poor. Others of his children are still parishioners and workers in the parish.
NOTE .- REPORT OF DR. PETERS TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE SHELTERING ARMS IN THE MATTER OF THE SISTERS.
GENTLEMEN :
Having been requested by the Executive Committee to lay before the Trustees at their Annual Meeting the his- tory of the connection of the Sisters of St. Mary with "The Sheltering Arms," I beg leave to offer to the Board the following report, including my thoughts and motives, subject to the inaccuracies attendant upon every effort which rests in great degree upon human memory.
A twenty-years' connection with Public Institutions has necessarily revealed to me much of the internal manage- ment of these establishments. It could not escape the eye of a constant visitor that in our Charitable Institutions there is with some favorable exceptions nothing homelike and attractive, little that is refining or civilizing, much of selfishness and neglect. The difficulty of procuring Matrons and female assistants who are honest, temperate, and conscientious in the discharge of duty has been discourag- ing to managing boards and in one case at least defeated the attempt to found a new and needed charity. Embar- rassments of the kind referred to interfered with the growth and usefulness of Mrs. Richmond's House of Mercy, beget- ting even in the mind of that determined woman apprehen- sion lest her efforts should finally fail owing to the want of proper persons to conduct the internal affairs of the House.
In the summer of 1863 it was suggested that the Sisters who had recently left St. Luke's Hospital might perhaps take charge both of the House of Mercy and of some
339
Commission on Sisterhoods
departments in another Charity in which I was interested. Two of the Sisters called on me and so far as concerned the House of Mercy preliminary negotiations were left to me the first Rector of this City to take the unemployed ladies by the hand and introduce them again to work; the result being that upon nearly their own terms the House of Mercy was delivered over to their charge.
Desiring to have the Sisters officially acknowledged and established upon a firm foundation, I suggested to the Bishop the appointment of a committee of clergymen to consider the subject, and this proposition being approved by the Bishop, at his desire I named to him all the clergy excepting myself who acted on the commission. These gentlemen were the present Bishops of Western New York and Long Island, also Drs. Tuttle and Dix; the Bishop doing me the honor to include me among the number. A report was made by this Committee to the Bishop in reply to a series of written questions from him. The Bishop decided to recognize and organize the Sisterhood of Saint Mary and in my own Church of St. Michael in the City of New York it was inaugurated with five members.
This short sketch of history will make manifest the early and active interest taken by me in the formation, recog- nition, and work of the Sisters.
The order and good management introduced by these devoted ladies into the House of Mercy led me to the con- clusion that could such superintendence be everywhere secured the common evils of our Charities would cease to exist. Early in the year 1864 a new want presented itself, which was of an Asylum for children temporarily homeless. Upon consulting the Sisters it appeared that the present Superior of the Sisterhood had already revolved in her own mind the subject of an Institution for children on the broadest platform. She had thought that such an Institu- tion ought not to be what is termed denominational, but that it should be left free of access for religious teaching to all Protestant ministers and thus the interest and support
340
Annals of St. Michael's
of the whole community be assured. Long observation had convinced me that whatever advantages might attend this system were more than counterbalanced by the ill effects upon the children themselves, and that if intended as a home the inmates should as in any family home have a defined Church connection and pastoral care.
The assistance of persons not of our own Church was asked and received but with the distinct understanding that the children should be trained according to the usages of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Upon these considera- tions a few persons not Episcopalians entered the Board of Trustees and the Ladies' Association, and numerous con- tributions have every year been sent in by increasing numbers of the charitable with little regard to religious connection. One of the five-thousand-dollar donations for the cottages was from a well-known member of All Souls Church under care of Dr. Bellows, Unitarian.
The Sisters accepted the internal management of the Institution, readily waiving their own wishes, and carrying out the intention of the Trustees. The apartments necessary for the accommodation of the Sisters were placed under their own control and not subject to visitation as part of the Institution by the Trustees. To the rooms occupied by them was added eighteen months later a room to be fitted up by themselves at their own expense and used as an oratory. While Sisters of the Holy Com- munion they had been allowed for their private devotions a room called by the same name, and it seemed a reason- able request which the President took upon himself to grant. I have from the first regarded all the apartments assigned to the Sisters as entirely their own as though they lived in a neighboring house and came to the Shelter- ing Arms to do their work.
The Sisters having, as already stated, yielded their own preferences have ever faithfully fulfilled their part. The changes in theological views, costume, and devotional usages never in any way interfered with their training of
341
Separate Institutions
the children, which has continued according to the original agreement.
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.