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 28
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387
Mr. Peters Elected Rector
On his return from Oregon in February, 1853, Mr. Richmond resigned the cure of St. Mary's, and Mr. Peters was elected rector. During the entire period of his rectorship Mr. Richmond had received no salary from the church. Not only had his nominal stipend of $300 a year not been paid, but he had also expended money for the church for which he had not been reim- bursed. In 1849 the sum due to him amounted to $6566.17, which he donated to the church; but again in the following year it is noted in the vestry records that he had expended $400 on "Assistant Ministers and Horse Hire," which debt he also cancelled. Mr. Peters undertook to make the church really self-supporting. Owing to his other duties at St. Michael's and All Angels' it was at first arranged that Mr. Neide should continue to reside in the rectory, working in the parish, and at the same time conducting services on Blackwell's Island under the Mission to Public Institutions. In 1854 he was succeeded in the position of assistant, residing in the parsonage, by Rev. Robert T. Pearson, formerly in charge of a Methodist congregation in Manhattanville, who had recently taken orders in the Church. In 1855, the parsonage having been enlarged, Mr. Peters himself contributing no small portion of the expense of that enlargement, the latter moved into the rectory, and Rev. Charles E. Phelps, his old seminary classmate, who was also in charge of All Angels' Church and a missionary of the Mission to Public Institutions, was appointed his assistant, so continuing by annual appointment of the Vestry until the close of Mr. Peters's rectorship. During the greater part of Mr. Peters's rectorship Rev. Thomas Cook was also engaged as a special assistant to hold services in German for the large German population of Manhattanville and
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vicinity, Mr. Peters not feeling himself competent to preach in that language, although quite capable to administer the offices of the Church, Baptism, Matri- mony, etc. In this work among the Germans Mr. Peters was materially assisted by the group of Caspar Meier's family and descendants in Bloomingdale.
With the settlement in the parsonage of its own rector, the independent existence of St. Mary's Church may be said to have begun, and between that time and the date of his resignation Mr. Peters succeeded in putting the church on a self-supporting basis. The basement of the church was equipped for a Sunday School. The church lot was increased, largely, as he writes, through the liberality and vigorous exertions of Mr. James Punnett, from 60 x 100 to 140 X 148 feet. A much larger section of land was bought by Mr. Peters and Mr. Punnett, and transferred by them in 1858 to St. Michael's Free Church Society for the bene- fit of St. Mary's Church, when the latter should be able to pay off the mortgage put upon it. This, unfortu- nately, it was never able to do, and a dozen years later the land was acquired by The Sheltering Arms, as related elsewhere. Mr. Peters's rectorship of St. Mary's was a time of simple living and hard work. It was his custom to open the church, kindle the fire, and ring the bell himself. Only thus could he be sure that all would be in readiness for service. March Ist, 1859, he resigned the rectorship of St. Mary's Church to become rector of St. Michael's, and with that date the actual connection between the Mother Church and this its oldest daughter ceased, the latter being at that time about thirty-six years of age.1
1For the material in this chapter, besides the records of St. Mary's Church, which were kindly placed at my disposal, I am
389
Services at Fort Washington
II. St. Ann's Church, Fort Washington .- There was, in the earlier part of the last century, a small handful of poor people located at what was called Fort Washington Pass. On the evening of the second Sun- day after the Epiphany, as he notes with his usual Churchly precision, January 17, 1819, the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, rector of St. Michael's Church, gave a lecture in the school-house at Fort Washington and baptized there a dozen young people belonging to three different families, Collins, Sherman, and Francis, and varying in age from nineteen years down to infants in arms. After this it was apparently his custom to hold occa- sional services in that neighborhood until the close of his rectorship. Mr. Richmond took up the work thus begun and undertook to organize it into a church. His first service at Fort Washington, like his first ser- vice at Manhattanville, was held November 26, 1820, the one apparently in the afternoon, the other in the evening, at the house of a Mr. Morse. At that period, it will be remembered, no services were held in St. James's Church at this time of the year, and, therefore, the morning service at St. Michael's ended, the rector was free to utilize the remainder of the day for mis- sionary work at his own discretion.
The work at Fort Washington was somewhat slower in development than the work at Manhattanville, and it is not until 1827 that mention is made in the Con- vention Journal of the actual organization of a church. By that date St. Ann's Church, Fort Washington, had been incorporated, and "the congregation now worships in the Hamilton School." This church continued
chiefly indebted to an Historical Address delivered at the Semi- Centennial Celebration of St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, by the Rev. T. M. Peters, S. T. D., December 18, 1873.
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to be reported to and represented in Convention for about ten years. While actually an appendage of St. Michael's, yet during a portion of this period, from 1829-30, Rev. Augustus Fitch, a teacher, recorded somewhat vaguely as connected with a school in Bloom- ingdale and having a school in Harlem, was minister, and, after his ordination as priest, rector of the parish. Sunday services, at least during the summer, do not seem as a rule to have been conducted by Mr. Rich- mond himself, but he reports in 1829 that he is officiat- ing on Wednesday evenings at St. Ann's. In 1832 he reports that the services in St. Ann's Church are conducted by the Rev. J. M. Forbes, who "divides his time between Manhattanville and Fort Washington, holding the services on Sunday evenings at the Bloom- ingdale Insane Asylum." St. Ann's was represented in Convention during part or all of this time by Mr. Frederick DePeyster, of the Vestry of St. Michael's.
The records of the church do not exist, and we have no knowledge of the names of the wardens and vestry- men, but it would seem that here, as at Manhattan- ville, they were, to a considerable extent at least, the same persons who were also officers in St. Michael's parish. No church building was ever erected, and fi- nally, in 1836 or 1837, the centre of population in that neighborhood having shifted farther to the southward, and Rev. William Richmond having left Blooming- dale to undertake a Free Church enterprise downtown, St. Ann's Church was abandoned. At a later date, in 1847, the Church of the Intercession, now become a Chapel of Trinity, was founded, largely through the instrumentality of the parish of St. Andrew's in Harlem, itself a child of St. Michael's, to provide for the spiritual needs of the new village of Carmansville, which had
39I
St. Matthew's Church, Yorkville
sprung up a mile or so farther to the southward, but in the same general district for which St. Ann's had been originally designed.
III. St. Matthew's Church, Yorkville .- In his reports as rector of St. James's Church, Hamilton Square, Dr. Jarvis mentions a missionary school which has been undertaken for "the blacks." There was at an early date, apparently, a considerable colored popula- tion in St. James's parish, centring somewhere in the neighborhood of 64th Street. At a later date a consider- able white population grew up eastward of Hamilton Square, having its centre farther to the north. These were people of an entirely different class from the wealthy summer residents who were pewholders at St. James's. As rector of that church, Mr. Richmond felt under obligation to care for these people. As they would not come to the parish church of St. James he undertook to hold services for them. These services were begun at about 84th Street, in the village of York- ville, April 6, 1828, and as a result there was organized what was known as St. Matthew's Church, which was never, however, incorporated, and of which no formal reports appear in the Convention Journal. The only mention of this work in Mr. Richmond's reports to Convention is an occasional reference to the service which he is rendering to "another church in Yorkville." After the separation of St. Michael's and St. James's, in 1842, Mr. Richmond handed over this mission, together with the educational work which he had un- dertaken in Yorkville, to the rector of St. James's Church. The work seems to have been continued as a mission for some years. Finally in 1853, Rev. Dr. Chauncey, having become rector of St. James's Church, founded in that neighborhood, as successor to and a
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development from the mission formerly known as St. Matthew's, the Church of the Redeemer, which was at a much later date removed to 136th Street.
IV. St. Andrew's Church, Harlem .- Toward the end of 1828 Mr. Richmond extended his activities to Harlem. This was a village of considerable im- portance, founded at an early date, and having a well- established Dutch Reformed Church. There were, however, not a few Episcopalians residing there, some for the summer and some all the year round. These found it difficult and inconvenient to attend services at St. James's or St. Michael's. Dr. Wainwright, then rector of Grace Church, and subsequently provisional Bishop of the Diocese, seems to have been in the habit of spending his summer vacations in Harlem, and it is said to have been at his suggestion that a meeting of a few of the inhabitants of that vicinity was held at the house of Mr. Pennoyer, the apothecary of the village, at the southwestern corner of Third Avenue and I22d Street. Mr. T. C. Groshon, candidate for Holy Orders, working in St. Mary's Church under Rev. Mr. Rich- mond, presided on this occasion. A resolution was introduced and passed, to the effect that it is ex- pedient to erect a Protestant Episcopal Church in the village of Harlem, and a committee was appointed to solicit donations.
In 1828 Mr. Richmond took the matter up and en- gaged the Rev. G. L. Hinton as assistant minister to conduct services once each Sunday at St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, and once in Harlem. Ar- rangements were made for holding services in the Village Academy, on 120th Street, near Third Avenue, by the courteous permission of its trustees, who were for the most part members of the Dutch Reformed
393
All Angels' Church
Church. Mr. Richmond held the first service at this place December 7, 1828, after which Mr. Hinton took up the work. He met with such success that on the 14th day of February, 1829, a meeting of the congre- gation was held at the Academy, wardens and vestry- men were chosen, and the parish was duly organized under the corporate title of "The Rector, Wardens and Vestrymen of St. Andrew's Church, in the Village of Harlem, in the Twelfth Ward of the City and County of New York." At the first meeting of the Vestry the Rev. George L. Hinton was elected rector. Mr. Richmond raised the sum of $600 from various city rectors, in subscriptions of $50 each, for the space of two years, to pay the salary of Mr. Hinton, who con- tinued until 1830 to be assistant at St. Mary's Church as well as rector of St. Andrew's.
Technically, the parent of St. Andrew's may be said to be St. Mary's Church, as Mr. Hinton is recorded as assistant at that Church. St. Mary's was, however, at that time and until much later, a mere dependency of St. Michael's and it was in reality, therefore, the rector of St. Michael's to whom the foundation of St. Andrew's Church is due.
V. All Angels' Church .- Some account has been given in an earlier chapter of the conditions and the population of the territory now included in Central Park. In the village then called Seneca, on the site of the present reservoir, the Rev. James Richmond commenced a mission Sunday School in 1833, after his return from Europe and before his consecration, under the direction of his brother, the Rev. William Richmond, rector of St. Michael's Church. Thirteen years later, 1846, work in this region was resumed, and a Sunday School was started in the house of a Miss
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Annals of St. Michael's
Evers, in 85th Street near 8th Avenue, by Mr. Minot M. Wells, then a student in the General Theological Seminary, afterwards rector of the Church of the Holy Innocents, Highland Falls, and Miss A. E. Hal- stead. In the following year the Rev. T. M. Peters, then assistant at St. Michael's, took charge of the Sun- day School, and commenced further to hold regular religious services in the same place. In 1848 four ladies, theretofore unknown in connection with the work, Mrs. Emma Dashwood, Mrs. Louisa L. Wright, Mrs. Frances A. Carroll, and Miss Arabella Ludlow, gave four lots in 85th Street near 8th Avenue as a site for a church and burial ground.
Mr. Peters undertook to raise the money to build a church on this site and collected, chiefly in small sums, $1308.87, the congregation of St. Michael's donating a part of it, by a general solicitation, ap- parently, of all Churchmen whom he could reach. The building actually cost about $1000 more than the amount collected, leaving the church that much in debt to Mr. Peters. The church was consecrated in 1849, under the name of All Angels', Dr. A. V. Williams, Rev. C. R. Duffie, John A. King, and John Jay, Jr., being appointed trustees. That part of the land not built upon was used as a graveyard, and many poor people, especially colored people of that neighborhood, were buried there during the cholera visitation of 1849. Shortly after this, in 1851, the city forbade all interments below 86th Street, and, as All Angels' was just below that limit, the cemetery was closed in that year. In that year also, Mr. Peters purchased for the purpose of a cemetery seven acres of land in Astoria. In 1852, Mr. Peters deeded both the cemetery in Astoria and
395
Deeded to St. Michael's
also All Angels' Church, the title to which seems to have vested in him, in trust to St. Michael's Church, on condition of the payment by the latter of the debt of $1000 due to him.
In his report to Convention in 1853 Mr. Peters says of the work at All Angels': "It is true missionary ground among a large, scattered, poor population. Many of those ministered to are blacks." There were 77 persons baptized in that year, of whom 6 were adults, 4 con- firmed, 4 couples married, 22 persons buried; and there were 50 communicants, and 70 catechumens. It was a vigorous mission, but so poor that the total contributions for the year were only $13.58; $1.03 for the poor, $3.51 for parish purposes, and $9.04 for the Suburban Clerical Association, that is, really, for the Mission to Public Institutions. The report of the work of the latter in the Colored Home, Bellevue Hospital, Alms House, Blackwell's Island, New York Orphan Asylum, Randall's Island, Penitentiary, etc., is included in the report of All Angels' Church for that year, the future City Mission Society being then only a parochial undertaking of St. Michael's Church and its dependencies.
In 1856 the city of New York condemned the land between 5th and 8th avenues from 59th to 104th streets, including, of course, the four lots on which All Angels' stood, for a park, awarding the sum of $4010 as damages therefore. In the spring of the preceding year, 1855, Mr. Peters had engaged Rev. Charles E. Phelps as assistant at St. Mary's and All Angels', as- signing to him the especial charge of the latter, to- gether with work in the Mission to Public Institutions. Mr. Phelps writes of his duties and of the early days of All Angels' Church as follows:
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Annals of St. Michael's
A part of my duty was to hold service at the Peni- tentiary on Blackwell's Island every Sunday morning. On the second Sunday in the month, however, the Rev. William Richmond, then the rector of St. Michael's, had been in the habit of holding service at the Penitentiary, including the Holy Communion. On those Sundays I took his place at St. Michael's, either by reading the service or preaching. I held service every Sunday, at I P.M., at All Angels' Mission, which at that time was located in 85th Street, a little east of 8th Avenue. The congregation was composed partly of colored people, and partly of Germans, all of whose houses were located in what was afterward the Central Park. This continued for about a year, when the church and houses all had to be vacated, on account of the opening of the Park. It was then a problem what was to be done, for the congregation had all been dispersed. Dr. Peters suggested that I should begin holding services in a private house [of a Mrs. Brown] on the Bloomingdale Road. The congregation soon became so good that it was found necessary to hire a public hall on 74th Street and Broadway. All the expense of this was borne by Dr. Peters himself, with members of St. Michael's Church, and Trinity Church, which helped us.
As a result of the condemnation of the Park, the entire old congregation was scattered and a new congregation organized, only one person in which belonged to the original congregation of All Angels'. The old church building was bought from the city at a cost of $250 and removed piecemeal to the pre- sent site, 8Ist Street and IIth Avenue, now West End Avenue, where four lots had been purchased at an expense of $2825.86. In the meantime, on Janu- ary 23, 1858, St. Michael's Free Church Society had been organized for the purpose of "the establishment of Free Churches in the City of New York in communion
397
Incorporation of All Angels
with and subject to the discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America." The incorporators of this Society were the Rev. T. M. Peters, and Messrs. James Punnett, William Henry Low, Thomas A. Richmond, A. V. Williams, D. T. Brown, and P. C. Tiemann. To this Society, after the $1000 which had been advanced in 1852 had been repaid, St. Michael's Church made over the property held by it for All Angels' Church.
Services were begun in the new All Angels' Church on the last Sunday in June, 1858, and by Christmas of the same year the attendance had become so good that it was thought best to incorporate the parish. This was done on December 29, 1858, and at the same time the Rev. Charles E. Phelps was elected rector, Mr. Peters having resigned the cure when he took charge of St. Michael's Church. Mr. Phelps's salary was helped out after he became rector, as it had been before, by the work which he did as a missionary to the Public Institutions. He writes that during the three years before he was made rector of All Angels' he had held services for the Mission to Public Institu- tions at Randall's Island, Blackwell's Island, Bellevue Hospital, and the Colored Home, then located in Yorkville, at 64th Street. During the ten following years, while he was rector of All Angels' Church, he served at Bellevue Hospital, the Colored Home, and the New York Orphan Asylum, with occasional services at Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum and the House of Mercy. Mr. Phelps resigned the charge of All Angels' on account of ill health in 1868 and was succeeded by the Rev. John M. Heffernan. In the following year, 1869, St. Michael's Free Church Society conveyed to the vestry of All Angels' Church the property held
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Annals of St. Michael's
by it for that church, including the land and building, the deed providing that the title to this property should revert to St. Michael's Church in case a free church was not "thereafter always maintained upon the property of all Angels'." Mr. Heffernan was suc- ceeded in June of 1870 by the Rev. Dr. D. F. Warren. In December of the following year, the latter proposed to Rev. Dr. Peters, both as rector of St. Michael's Church and President of St. Michael's Free Church Society, the sale of All Angels' Church to Trinity Church, the latter undertaking to erect a chapel on that site. As the result of several communications on this subject, Dr. Peters writes, under date of Decem- ber 19, 1871:
I do not see how we could take the action proposed by you without contradicting ourselves. St. Michael's for- merly held All Angels' property. We thought that as an independent Church All Angels' would eventually prosper more than if attached as a chapel to another church. If it is to return to a dependent position it had better come back to its starting point. I do not think it would be pleasant to any of us to look back at all the labor of estab- lishing All Angels', if it were to result in our procuring ground for another church to build a chapel on.
I do not think it is the best thing for All Angels'."
That was the end of the proposition to turn All Angels' into a Chapel of Trinity. Dr. Warren resigned November 1, 1872. In 1873 All Angels' Church asks St. Michael's to release its reversionary interest in All Angels' property, that the latter may borrow money thereon, and, in the interest of the future of All Angels', St. Michael's refuses. On Christmas day, 1873, Rev. Dr. Charles F. Hoffman became rector of All Angels', and from that date on St. Michael's Church
399
A Settlement Asked for
has no further direct concern with its affairs until 1888, when the neighborhood had changed from a semi-rural suburb to an integral part of a great and crowded city. On March 19th of that year the following com- munication was addressed to the Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Michael's Church by the Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of All Angels' Church :
At a meeting of the Vestrymen of this parish it was resolved that the following communication be forwarded to your honorable body :
Whereas, this parish has received an offer from the Rev. Chas. F. Hoffman, D.D., to build and complete for it a new Church, at an approximate cost of $100,000-on condition that the present property be first freed from all assess- ments and other incumbrances, and that the current ex- penses of the parish be pledged by responsible parties for the next two years; and that the necessary excavation be first made; and Whereas, these conditions-necessitating the raising of over $20,000-can with great difficulty be met, because of an alleged remainder in this property said to be held by your parish, giving us in reality, as has been claimed, only a free lease of this property on conditions imposed by members of your parish; and Whereas, this Church we now occupy has been maintained as a free Church for more than thirty years, and for fifteen years at great expense to the rector of this parish; and Whereas, we have paid in full a Mortgage of $2500, with interest for many years on this property, and furthermore to retain said property we must still pay assessments amounting to nearly $5000; and Whereas, the greatly increased value of this property may be a source of temptation to some future members of the corporation in which the alleged remainder in this property is claimed to be vested, and may thus be a constant source of discord between the parish of "St. Michael's" and the parish of "All Angels'"; and Whereas, the great change in the character of this vicinity promises
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to do away with the necessity of a free church to meet the wants of poor people, and in fact may sometime necessitate the raising of its income by means other than the offertory, although we have no present idea of restricting the freedom of the seats; and Whereas, there will always be more free seats in the new Church (in any contingency) than there are now seats of all kinds in the present structure; and Whereas, in the opinion of the Diocesan and all other persons interested in the future of this work as a part of the Church in this great City, the efficiency, permanence and prosperity of the work will be greatly enhanced, and the unity of our two parishes greatly advanced by the transfer to us on your part of any interest you may now have or claim to have, by reason of the said alleged remainder in this property-We therefore respectfully submit these pre- ambles for your consideration, with the request that you will, as soon as possible in view of the interests at stake, take the matter up and appoint a committee from your body to confer with a like committee from this body, that a fair and reasonable basis of settlement may be agreed upon for submission to the respective corporations, at an early date.
The idea of a free church entertained by the persons who composed this document, namely, that a free church is meant only for poor people and that if people are well-to-do they will of necessity have a pewed church, was of course abhorrent to the conception of a free church entertained by the Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Michael's Church, and repre- sented in fact an idea against which Dr. Peters had often earnestly and publicly protested as actually anti-Christian. The object of a free church was to do away with the distinction of rich and poor in God's house, to bring rich and poor together in the same building to the advantage of both. It was to create
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