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 27
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While studying in Germany, Peters had become con- vinced of the extreme importance, for Old Testament
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Excavations at Nippur
study, of excavations in Assyria and Babylonia, and almost immediately on his return to the United States he joined with a group of members of the American Oriental Society in organizing a committee to promote Babylonian exploration. It was his good fortune, through the kindness of Bishop Potter, to secure the ear of the late Miss Katherine Lorillard Wolfe for this enterprise. In the winter of 1883-84 she gave him $5000 for Babylonian research, which was turned over to the American Institute of Archeology and used in sending out a tentative expedition, or expedition of reconnoissance, under Dr. William Hayes Ward of the Independent, the results of which were published later by Peters in his Nippur.
Stimulated by this success, after his removal to Philadelphia Peters endeavored to secure funds for the further prosecution of this work and for the conduct of actual excavations in Babylonia. Finally, in 1887, he elicited the interest of some rich Philadelphians and friends of the University, who contributed the money for an expedition on condition that Peters should himself become director. Leave of absence was granted him for this purpose, and he went out to Babylonia in 1888 as director of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Babylonia, the first expedition for excavation in the Semitic Orient ever sent out from this country, and one of the first expeditions for archeological work of any description ever undertaken by Americans. The expedition was delayed a long time in Constantinople, awaiting permission from the Porte to excavate, and there Peters completed a literary work on which he had been engaged for some years, the translation and editing of the Hebrew Old Testament in a form which should make it intelligible without comment to the
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ordinary reader. This work was published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, with whom in fact the idea origi- nated, under the title Scriptures Hebrew and Christian (the first two volumes dealing with the Old Testament were by Peters, the last volume, dealing with the New Testament, by his colleague, Dean Bartlett of the Philadelphia Divinity School), and later, with an intro- duction by Dean Farrar, the same work was published in England under the title The Bible for Home and School.
The place selected for excavation by the Babylonian expedition was Nippur, the site of the oldest religious cult of which scholars had any knowledge from the inscriptions, but situated, unfortunately, in a pecul- iarly difficult and dangerous territory, about five days' journey south of Baghdad, in the desert region between the Tigris and Euphrates. Excavations were commenced there early in 1889 and ended, after a little more than two months, with a serious disaster, the burning by the Arabs of the camp of the explorers, who were robbed and narrowly escaped massacre. The other members of the expedition resigned and Peters was recalled to America. The supporters of the expedition in Philadelphia, with a faith as com- mendable as it was remarkable, sent Peters back to the field, better equipped than before, and the second year's work, 1890, resulted in a great success. The oldest temple discovered up to that time was partly unearthed by this expedition, E-Kur, the temple of En-Lil, the Bel of Nippur, and a very large number of extremely ancient inscriptions were unearthed and brought back to Constantinople. These were the oldest Babylonian inscriptions theretofore discovered, and the results of that expedition carried our knowl- edge of history back 2000 years in one leap.
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Excavations at Nippur
Peters was obliged to spend a considerable part of 189 1 in Constantinople working over the material found in the expedition, and urging the claims of the University of Pennsylvania to a share in the spoils. As a result of this work he finally secured from the Turkish govern- ment the gift of a large share of the objects found, which were handed over to the University of Pennsyl- vania. Primarily as a result of this expedition a magnificent museum was erected to contain these and other archeological objects found by expedi- tions which grew out of the interest in archeology aroused in Philadelphia circles by this first expedition to Babylonia. The work at Nippur thus begun has been continued by the University of Pennsylvania more or less down to the present time with very astonishing results. The University of Chicago has also sent out an expedition to Babylonia. Further than this, Germany, France, and England have been aroused to new interest in Babylonia and Persia, and large and important expeditions have been sent out by those countries.
Until 1895 Peters continued to be the home director of the Babylonian work, the excavations in the field, from 1893 onward, being conducted by Dr. John Henry Haynes, Peters's lieutenant in the second expedition. An account of the work of the Babylonian expedition was published by Peters in 1896, under the title Nippur: or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates (Putnam's. 2 vols.).
In 1891, at the wish of his father, who expressed a desire for his assistance at St. Michael's in his declining years, and that he should take up his work after his death, Peters resigned his professorship at the Divinity School in Philadelphia and was made first assistant at
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St. Michael's, with right of succession to the rectorship. It was arranged that he should still continue to hold his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, spending two days a week there, the money received from this work being turned into the treasury of St. Michael's Church to enable the church to secure ad- ditional clerical assistance.
On the death of his father, in 1893, Peters was elected rector of St. Michael's Church, a position which he has held ever since. At the same time he resigned his professorship in the University of Pennsylvania. He has continued the work of St. Michael's on the lines laid down by his father, whose institution and city mission work, however, he did not feel competent or able to assume, in view of the increasing work in St. Michael's parish, due to the rapid growth of the neigh- borhood. He has also interested himself to a con- siderable extent in municipal affairs and those matters which are generally included under the term "civic righteousness." He is president of various organiza- tions dealing with municipal reform and has been con- cerned in a large amount of neighborhood work. He has endeavored to some extent to keep up his scholarly and literary work, lecturing somewhere each year on archeological or biblical themes. He is the author of The Old Testament and the New Scholarship and Early Hebrew Story, and has published a great many articles and reviews, besides collaborating in various publications dealing generally with Old Testa- ment work and oriental archeology.
In 1890, through the kindness of friends of the Phila- delphia Divinity School, he was enabled, after leaving the excavations at Nippur, to spend some months in travel and study in Palestine. In 1902 he requested from
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Travels in Palestine
the church a leave of absence of ten months, never having up to that time taken a long vacation, as has be- come the custom in city parishes, in order to revisit Pales- tine and prosecute further studies there. Owing to serious illness in his family, he was able to take in fact a vacation of only seven months, but during that time he had the good fortune, in company with Dr. Hermann Thiersch of Munich, to discover at the ancient Marissa, on the borders of Judæa, some very remarkable painted tombs. An account of these was published by Peters and Thiersch in England in 1906 under the title Painted Tombs from the Necropolis of Marissa, as a memoir of the Palestine Exploration Fund, in large quarto form, with numerous illustrations, the Dominican monks in Jerusalem contributing the colored sketches.
Dr. Peters received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1895, and in the same year the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Yale University. In 1904 he was appointed Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, of which he is also one of the Trustees.
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LOOKING NORTH FROM BLOOMINGDALE HEIGHTS
In Foreground Block House of 1812 War ; in Distance, Claremont. From Old Painting of 1814
PART III CHURCHES AND INSTITUTIONS FOUNDED WHOLLY, OR IN PART, THROUGH ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH
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CHAPTER XIV
CHURCHES
I. St. Mary's, Manhattanville .- At the commence- ment of the nineteenth century, until after the War of 1812, there was no Manhattanville. On the Hudson shore at this point was a bay called Harlem Cove, and so far as the region had a name that was the name applied to the valley which cuts the western highlands of Man- hattan Island at 129th Street. Above this valley on the south, on a high bluff overlooking the river, stood the house of Michael Hogan, one of the original pew- holders of St. Michael's Church, now Claremont Hotel, and on the other side of the valley, but much farther removed from it, at about 144th Street, stood the country home of Jacob Schieffelin, another of the original pewholders. Both of these men had been Royalists in the Revolutionary period. Michael Hogan was an Irishman, born in County Clare in 1766, and served as midshipman in the British Navy with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV, for whom he seems to have conceived a strong affection. It was as midshipman in the British Navy that he first made acquaintance with New York, and he seems to have become so familiar with its waters at that time that he was commissioned to bring a French prize which his ship had captured into this port without a
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pilot. Later he entered the service of the East India Company and made a fortune in India, where he also married. He came to New York in 1803 or 1804 in his own ship from the Cape of Good Hope, with twelve slaves, whom he afterwards set free, and a family of young children. He is said to have been the first Irishman of position and property who came to this country. He built two houses in Bloomingdale, one of which he sold, retaining the other for his own resi- dence, and naming it Claremont after the residence of his old fellow midshipman the Duke of Clarence, per- haps also with some recollection of his own birthplace in Ireland. Mr. Hogan became as zealous a citizen of his new country as he had before been of the old. He was a man of considerable prominence in the com- munity, and when the South American Republics set themselves free from Spain he was sent as the repre- sentative from this country to Chili to greet our new fellow free state.
The history of Mr. Schieffelin has been related in a former chapter. To him and his Quaker brothers-in- law, Messrs. Lawrence and Buckley, belonged a large tract immediately to the north of Bloomingdale, in- cluding the valley above described. In this valley, some time before 1820; they laid out the village of Manhattanville, opening eight or ten streets, all of which, Manhattan and Lawrence streets excepted, have since been done away with.
In those days, Mr. Thomas Finlay conducted a school in a house which is still standing, directly over- looking the old village of Manhattanville, upon the hill spur west of Broadway between Manhattan and 127th streets. In this school-house public service was occasionally celebrated by the clergy of different
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St. Mary's Church Organized
denominations. The only churches accessible to the denizens of Manhattanville were St. Michael's, Bloom- ingdale, and the Dutch Reformed Church in Harlem, and no public conveyances ran from Manhattanville to either of those places. There were in fact only fifteen houses in the whole of the Manhattanville valley at that time. During the latter part of Dr. Jarvis's rectorship at St. Michael's, he had apparently held services on one or two occasions in Mr. Finlay's schoolroom, the same courtesy being extended to him as to the ministers of all other denominations, in- cluding Roman Catholics; Mrs. Finlay, always, after service, according to the custom of the day, offering to the officiating clergyman a glass of wine. In the autumn of his accession to the cure of St. Michael's, November 26, 1820, Mr. Richmond commenced con- ducting similar services at Mr. Finlay's school-house. November 28, 1823, Mr. Finlay died and was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard, and twenty days later, Thanksgiving Day, December 18th, a meeting was held at the school-house, with the approval and at the in- vitation of Mrs. Finlay, to organize a church. Morning service was said by a lay reader appointed by the Bishop. Mr. Richmond arrived by appointment after service, and those present organized themselves into a church, under the title of "the Rector, Church Wardens and Vestrymen of St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, Ninth Ward of the City of New York." The wardens chosen were Valentine Nutter, also a warden of St. Michael's, and Jacob Schieffelin, one of the founders and a vestryman of that church. At the first meeting of the Vestry, held December 27, 1823, Rev. William Richmond, rector of St. Michael's, was chosen rector of St. Mary's, and it was provided that "all male per-
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sons of full age who shall contribute the sum of fifty cents annually" to support the services of the church should be members of the congregation and entitled to vote. A committee was appointed to put in a claim to a share in the surplus proceeds of the sale of the "Common Lands of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of Harlem," according to the act of Legislature of March 28, 1820, and it was also provided that the "Free School" of St. Mary's Church should be estab- lished in the village of Manhattanville, and that a claim should be made on the trustees of the Harlem Commons' Fund for $2500 for this school under the aforementioned act. The next year the qualifications for membership were changed to "white male persons of full age, who shall for one year last preceding the Election have worshipped according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal Church and shall have con- tributed the sum of not less than fifty cents, " etc. It was also provided that " the Free School of St. Mary's Church shall be open equally to all denominations."
Mr. Schieffelin was especially interested in St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville belonging in considerable part to him, and his own country house standing in that neighborhood. His son, Gen. Richard L. Schieffelin, was associated with his father on the first vestry and was for many years treasurer of the parish, representing it also in Convention. The family in- terest has continued to this day, and since 1870 the Schieffelin family has been represented on St. Mary's vestry by Mr. George R. Schieffelin, son of Richard L. Schieffelin. It is not surprising to find John C. Hamilton, the son of Mr. Schieffelin's dear friend and neighbor, General Hamilton, elected to the Vestry in 1824, and his brother, James A. Hamilton, in 1826,
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Subscribers to Building Fund
in which year also, Jacob Lorillard was elected vestry- man. In 1824 it was decided to ask for an endowment from Trinity. This was never granted, but at a slightly later date an annual grant of $300 was made, reduced in 1849 to $200.
Mr. Richmond was assisted in his work at Manhat- tanville by Mr. Thomas T. Groshon, a lay reader, and services were held twice each Sunday in Mr. Finlay's school-house until sometime in the year 1825, when Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of the church on account of his other duties. Before that time, in 1824, Mr. Schieffelin had offered a piece of land 60 x 100 feet to the church, and the construction of a church building had begun. Among the subscribers to the building fund appear a number of names familiar in the history of the Church in New York in general and of St. Michael's Church in particular, with others who were not Churchmen at all, like Jacob Harsen. About $1200 was collected by subscription, through the efforts, principally, of Mr. Groshon; $800 was received from the Harlem Commons' Fund, and $1200 was borrowed on three mortgages, an assignment of which was taken by the Corporation of Trinity Church. In order to execute these mortgages, Rev. John Sellon was elected rector in 1825. He seems to have per- formed no other function than to contribute twenty dollars to the building fund, his name heading the sub- scription list, and sign the mortgages, after which he passes out of the records. In December, 1825, the Church moved out of Mr. Finlay's school into the school of James Macomb, which was given free of rent. The church was finally consecrated October 23, 1826. In the meantime Mr. Schieffelin's Quaker brothers-in-law had erected a Meeting House on land
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Annals of St. Michael's
adjoining that given by Mr. Schieffelin for St. Mary's Church. This Meeting House, long since vanished, lay between the church and Phineas Street, which ran a little west of what is now Amsterdam Avenue. It stood, therefore, on what is now The Sheltering Arms playground. A generation later members of the Law- rence family were among the most liberal contributors toward the erection of a rectory for St. Mary's Church.
The first bell hung in the church belonged to Jacob Schieffelin. It is supposed to have come from one of the West India islands, and had formerly been used on the Manhattanville Academy, which Mr. Schieffelin had built when Manhattanville was laid out, on what is now Manhattan Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The pulpit and desk, with hangings and drapery, were presented by St. George's Church. They were of the old three-decker type. The pulpit, six sided, stood like a watch tower against the chancel wall. It was approached by a high flight of winding stairs and guarded by a door. Above it was a sounding board, whose only visible sustaining agent was a small dove upon the top, which bore in its beak a branch from some tree or bush. In front of the pulpit, much lower down, was a long desk with a settee for three occupants. The Bible occupied the middle and higher portion of the desk, prayer books resting on a lower portion on either side. In front of this desk was a small pine table used for the administration of the Holy Communion. The arrangements of the church in this regard were not unlike those still common in many Congregational churches throughout New England.
As soon as the church was built a committee was appointed to let pews, and it was provided that the
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The Schieffelin Pew and Vault
members of the congregation entitled to a vote in the annual elections should be those who rented pews. It appears also that when Jacob Schieffelin and Hannah Lawrence, his wife, gave the land for the church, sixty feet on Lawrence Street and one hundred feet deep, they reserved the right to select a pew for themselves and their heirs and to build a vault. In the vestry minutes of June 19, 1828, it is recorded that they selected the double pew No. 19, at the east corner of the church, to the left of the pulpit, and a square of fifteen feet in front of the westerly front window for a vault, and here in fact the Schieffelin vault was built. In further recognition of its indebtedness to the Schieffelin family for its existence, the seal adopted by the church was the Schieffelin crest.
The Vestry had voted that Thomas T. Groshon should become rector as soon as he became deacon. He died, however, before his ordination, October 3, 1828, and Rev. William Richmond was again chosen rector. In his report to Convention he states that the pecuniary embarrassments of the church "induced him to take charge of it in addition to his other duties." There were at that time "very few families in the village in the habit of attending service." By the following year, however, the church is "generally filled every Sunday, and a considerable congregation has been present at the service, and during the instruction of the Bible class on Wednesdays." With a fund of $600, which he raised by $50 subscriptions from rectors of city churches, he engaged the Rev. George L. Hinton as his assistant to conduct services once each Sunday at St. Mary's, "and once in the village of Harlaem." He also raised a further sum of $1000 "to defray the current expenses of the Church and Sunday School,
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Annals of St. Michael's
pay the interest on the mortgage, and procure the neces- sary repairs and improvements." Mr. Richmond also brought a new accession of strength from St. Michael's to the Vestry in the persons of Doctors Williams, Mac- Donald, and Bailey, Messrs. Kane, Russell, Ford, De- Peyster, Holly, and Whitlock, all members of the Vestry of that church. Nevertheless the condition of St. Mary's continued to be a very embarrassed one. On April 13, 1830, Mr. Hinton informs the Vestry that he must resign his position as assistant unless paid $150 per annum, and owing to the "embarrassed con- dition of the finances" his resignation is accepted, the church at the same time relinquishing its claim on the missionary subscription raised by Mr. Richmond for work in Manhattanville and Harlem. In 1834 a judg- ment was obtained against the church. In 1835 it appears that Mr. Richmond's annual salary of $300 has never been paid, and there is now due him the sum of $1850.
One event of great importance occurred in those years. In 1831 St. Mary's was made a free church, the first free church in New York, and apparently in the country. It should be added that the only recorded receipts from pew-rents for the preceding years, when St. Mary's was a pewed church, are $53 in the year 1827. To this period belongs also the first visitation of cholera in New York, in 1832. The terror of the unknown scourge was like that which prevailed in London in the great plague. Those in health de- serted the sick, fleeing from the houses where the cholera had appeared. Among others Mr. Hinton, who had been assistant at St. Mary's such a short time before, died of that disease. The city put the whole upper part of Manhattan under Mr. Richmond's care,
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The Cholera
with authority to order at his discretion and at the pub- lic charge whatever might be needed, either by way of food or other care, for the famine stricken and suffering poor. He went everywhere, entering where others feared to go; and with him
went one who deserves to be mentioned in connection with the history of Manhattanville, because she alone followed him everywhere, and went, without hesitation, to nurse wherever asked. Her standing, Churchwise, was not good; her position socially inferior; her education and mental culture entirely neglected; yet, what Christians would not do, Mrs. Reid did. She practised, in time of sore trial, what they were slow to do-the religion which visits those in affliction.
In 1836 Rev. James C. Richmond was appointed assistant minister with the right of succession to the rectorship, and in 1837, on the resignation of his brother, he became rector. There are no vestry records from 1840 to 1849, and between 1840 and 1844 there are not even notices of annual elections. From other sources it appears that Rev. James Richmond resigned his rectorship of St. Mary's about 1843; but the actual work of the parish had been done by Mr. Thomas M. Peters, acting as lay reader, since October or November of 1841. During that period a Sunday evening service was held in the church each Sunday, with a Sunday School in the afternoon. The entire receipts of the church at that period, outside of the Trinity grant, were only about $16 a year, the amount of the Sunday night collections. From the reports to Convention it appears, however, that the Sun- day School of St. Mary's was through all this period larger than the Sunday Schools at St. Michael's and
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St. James's, owing to the fact that St. Mary's minis- tered to a very poor congregation and St. Michael's and St. James's to rich congregations of summer resi- dents. Moreover, St. Mary's Church was located in a village, St. Michael's and St. James's in country districts. In July, 1847, Mr. Peters, having taken deacon's orders, was appointed assistant to Mr. Richmond, and put in charge of St. Mary's Church. During Mr. Richmond's absence on his Oregon mission, from 1851 to 1853, Mr. Peters, being in charge also of St. Michael's, All Angels', and the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, engaged Rev. George L. Neide to assist him at Manhattanville. It being plain that the church could not be made suc- cessful and self-supporting without a resident minister Mr. Peters undertook at this time to build a rectory by subscription; which was completed and paid for at a cost of $1167.32, Mr. Peters and Mr. Neide being them- selves the largest contributors. The subscription list, which has been preserved, contains not a single name which appeared on the subscription for the construc- tion of the church less than thirty years before. In the intervening period the Tiemanns had come into the valley and established their paint factory, and other industrial enterprises had followed suit. These are all represented among the subscribers. From Carmans- ville appear the Fields, Hicksons, and Bradhursts, and from Bloomingdale the Meiers, Punnetts, Schwabs, von Posts, and Malis. With Mr. Peters also appears in the Vestry a new group of men who were associated with him then or to be associated with him later in his City Mission and institutional work, and some of them also as vestrymen at St. Michael's, James Punnett, John Jay, Jas. S. Breath, Daniel F. Tiemann, Peter C. Tiemann, and Dr. D. T. Brown.
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