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 29
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ST. JAMES'S CHURCH Hamilton Square
ST. TIMOTHY'S PARISH HALF A CENTURY SINCE Looking South from Columbus Circle
:
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Guaranteed to be a Free Church
a church where rich and poor should meet together as real brothers, children of one father, that Dr. Peters had begged the money with which the land of All Angels' Church was bought, and he was unwilling that the land bought with money donated for that special purpose should be diverted to another use.
This communication from All Angels' Church was fol- lowed rapidly by another from the Bishop of the Diocese, dated April 7, 1888:
Since I saw you, I have been officially informed by the authorities of All Angels' Church that they are prepared to covenant that the Church which it is proposed to erect on the West End Avenue lots shall be a Free Church. They desire, however, that "the remainder" at present held by the Rector and Vestry of St. Michael's Church, shall, to avoid future friction, be vested in the Diocesan authori- ties, the trustees of the Estate and property of the Diocesan Convention, or some other Corporation ;- and this seems to me a reasonable, equitable and orderly request.
As there seems to be no further obstacle to the consum- mation of the precise purpose for which the lots at present occupied by All Angels' Church were originally secured, I am sure that you and your Vestry will gladly co-operate to hasten that end.
Both of these communications were presented to the Vestry of St. Michael's Church at the annual meeting, April 7, 1888. In accordance with the request made, a committee was appointed to confer with All Angels' Church, and, to make a long story short, the original condition attached to the property was maintained, namely, that any church built on that site should be forever free. Under that condition All Angels' Church occupies its present site.1
I The material for this account has been drawn from the records of St. Michael's Church and St. Michael's Free Church Society,
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VI. St. Timothy's Church .- About the middle of the last century the increase of population for whom there was no religious home on the west side of the city below 59th Street, a region still regarded as part of St. Michael's parish, led the acting rector of that parish to take steps to organize a church in that neighborhood. Toward the end of 1852, during Mr. Richmond's absence in Oregon, while he was in charge of St. Michael's and St. Mary's and rector of All Angels', Rev. T. M. Peters called Rev. James Cole Tracey from Cleveland, as his assistant, to undertake missionary work in the neighborhood above mentioned, with a view to organizing a new church, and to take part in the work of the Mission to Public Institutions, which was then conducted by the clergy of St. Michael's parish. In the latter work he assisted only for a brief period, all his energies being devoted to the establishment of the new church. In February of 1853 "a low, ill ventilated schoolhouse of clapboards holding scarce 100 people with comfort and located on the north side of 53rd Street west of 8th Avenue was rented for $75 a year." This enterprise was given the name of St. Timothy's Church. In six months' time the building was found insufficient to accommodate the congrega- tions, and at the Diocesan Convention that autumn Mr. Tracey reports 62 families and 253 individuals connected with the church, of whom, however, 29 only were communicants. A self-supporting parish (pay) school had been in existence for four months, with 75 scholars, and four lots of ground had been offered as a gift for a new church. The church was not actually incorporated until February 27, 1854.
and from personal letters of Rev. Charles E. Phelps, first rector of All Angels' Church after its incorporation.
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The First Report
In the Churchman of July of the same year Mr. Tracey writes as follows with regard to the neighborhood to which the church ministers.
I wish to make a statement of facts in regard to this new congregation. The district in which it is located has been entirely of a missionary character, the City proper having advanced its improvements but little further than Fifty-first Street, in which Street, near Eighth Avenue, the school house stands in which we are worshipping, the inhabitants being mostly of the working class. Above Twenty-eighth Street and west of Seventh Avenue, there is but one Episcopal Church, within the City limits, already built, and this church is of the smaller class.
The extent of territory comprises almost the whole of two wards of the city.
On the death of Mr. Tracey, in 1855, the Rev. Dr. Howland, then rector of the Church of the Holy Apos- tles, suggested an arrangement by which the Church of the Holy Apostles might come to the assistance of the struggling congregation, namely, the appointment of Rev. George Jarvis Geer, assistant minister of the Church of the Holy Apostles, to take charge of St. Timothy's Church, the Holy Apostles' thus paying the salary of the minister in charge and St. Timothy's de- fraying the remainder of the expenses. Two years later, in 1857, Dr. Geer became rector. The further history of the parish and its ultimate union with Zion Church do not belong in this article. St. Michael's relation to St. Timothy's was merely to lay the founda- tions, by sending a missionary to organize the church, and paying his salary until that was done; the rector and some members of the congregation also contribu- ting funds for the hiring of a place in which to conduct the work.
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VII. Bethlehem Chapel .- In another chapter will be found a description of the conditions prevailing in the squatter settlement which sprang up to the west of Eighth Avenue, after the creation of the Park, and the manner in which Dr. Peters finally secured a footing in that settlement in 1867. Bethlehem Chapel was the outcome of the work begun by him in that year. In the report of the City Mission Society to the Diocesan Convention in 1870 occurs the following mention of this work:
Bethlehem Chapel, the name of our Mission Centre among the Germans west of Central Park, is situated on 9th Avenue between 82d and 83d Streets. Two lots were purchased, and a cheap wooden building was erected in the autumn of 1869, and used through the winter, until found too small and inconvenient for its intended purpose. The Ladies' Industrial Society, connected with the Mission, have collected $5000, with which they are erecting a neat chapel and school room, the former above the latter. The zeal and energy of these ladies, under the superintendence of Mrs. Terhune, have added greatly to the effectiveness of the Mission. By their visiting, by the Industrial School and by their labors in the Sunday School, they have been the means of bringing many children and parents to the School and Church. The Rev. F. Oertel, who is in charge of this Mission, is assisted in the School by Mr. and Mrs. Torbeck. Daily, through the larger portion of the year, and nightly during autumn, winter and spring, the children and young people attend in large numbers the School instruction. The whole number actually ministered to in the German department of our labors has been 1355. With our separate school room and Churchly place of worship, we may expect in the future more fellow laborers, and, by God's blessing, we trust, larger results in Christian- izing these well nigh heathen people. It is our hope to have at the Bethlehem Mission in some not distant day a
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Removal of German Squatters
refuge, which may extend to the Germans the succor received by other classes at St. Barnabas.
From that day until the close of the actual mission work the Chapel remained under the super- vision and direction of the rector of St. Michael's, al- though at the same time a station of the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society. The latter institution paid during most or all of the time the salary of the German clergyman, St. Michael's pro- viding teachers for the Sunday School and Industrial Schools and the greater portion of their support, and providing also the superintendence and occasional services of its own clergy. In 1886, the poor German squatter population having practically entirely disap- peared, and a large number of houses having been built in that neighborhood by a member of the parish of the Incarnation, Dr. Peters suggested to the Rev. Arthur Brooks, rector of that church, to take over Bethlehem Chapel as a mission of the church of the Incarnation, with a view to establishing an independent parish. In point of fact Dr. Brooks did for some time hold services there, but with results not altogether satis- factory to himself. The congregation looked for to support the new church did not appear. This plan proving unsuccessful the Rev. Mr. Chamberlain, then assistant at All Angels', undertook to gather an inde- pendent congregation, if he might have the use of the chapel for the purpose. As the result of his efforts St. Matthew's Church was organized in 1887, and Bethlehem Chapel leased to it for one dollar. As is plain from the above, it is only indirectly, therefore, that St. Michael's Church can claim any relation to the establishment of St. Matthew's.
VIII. Church of the Archangel .- By 1887 the popu-
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lation on Harlem plain, north of Ioth Street and east of Morningside Park, was increasing so rapidly that Dr. Peters felt the necessity of taking some steps to pro- vide for their spiritual needs. The region was at that time quite inaccessible to St. Michael's Church, and even more inaccessible to St. Mary's, Manhattanville, and St. Andrew's and Holy Trinity, Harlem, the latter not yet removed to its present site. Accordingly, Dr. Peters engaged the Rev. Montgomery H. Throop, Jr., as assistant at St. Michael's Church and assigned to him the especial work of ministering to the people of that region and organizing them, if possible, into a church. At the same time he requested several members of St. Michael's parish living nearest that region to assist Mr. Throop in his work, and in his report to the Convention of 1888 he refers to the serv- ices which have been maintained above Central Park, "where a new parish is being organized." This work was known at first as St. Michael's Annex, and the Year Book and Messengers contain notices of collec- tions for the work, and testify to the interest in it felt in St. Michael's parish. The services at that time were held in "Brady's Hall, on 125th Street." Later it was for a brief period designated as the Church of the Advent and on October 9, 1888, St. Michael's Vestry gives formal consent to the organization of the Church of the Advent on territory north of Iroth Street and east of Morningside Park. The church was actually organized in that year, but the name finally adopted was the Church of the Archangel. The following report of the parish, presented in 1890, gives its history up to that date:
From about October 1, 1887, to about August 1, 1888, what is now the Church of the Archangel was a mission
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Archangel's First Church
of St. Michael's under the care of the Rev. Montgomery H. Throop, at that time assistant minister at St. Michael's. A little before August 1, 1888, under the advice of the Rector of St. Michael's the parish was incorporated. The Rev. Charles R. Treat assumed the Rectorship, September I, 1888. At that time the congregation was holding services in a store on the corner of 117th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, and numbered some ten or fifteen souls. The congregation soon became too large to meet in the little store, and from January 29, 1889 to June 30, 1889, held services in a hall upon 125th St. near Eighth Avenue. Two lots were purchased upon St. Nicholas Avenue between 117th and 118th Streets and the erection of a modest edifice begun. This was occupied for the first time, June 30, 1889. It was built with borrowed money, and the land was paid for with a purchase money mortgage. Therefore, as only a few hundred dollars have been received from any outside source, the efforts of the congregation have been thus far centered upon the task of self-support and payment of debts.
At date of report, the congregation hold the title upon the church, which is valued at $40,000 and we owe only about $20,000. There is no floating debt and there has never been a debt incurred there through excess of ex- penditure over income.
The Rev. Mr. Treat remained rector only until 1892. Under his successor the church failed to maintain itself and finally, in 1897, the mortgage on the property was foreclosed, the building sold to the Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas, and nothing remained of the parish except its incorporation and some furniture. A canvas of the Assembly District of which this region was a part, taken at this period under the auspices of the Federation of Churches, showed that there was a large and growing population of Protestants in this section, and among them a very
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considerable number of Churchmen. So between 7th and 8th avenues and roth and 120th streets, there were reported 1378 families, containing 5318 persons. Of these 884 families, containing 3361 persons, were Americans; 173 families, of 720 persons, German; 136 families, of 575 persons, Irish; and 59 families, of 218 persons, English. There were reported in this section 142 Episcopalian families without church homes. The remainder of that neighborhood, not contained in the 21st Assembly District, and therefore not included in this census, was of the same character. It was evidently a region which needed and should be able to support an Episcopal Church.
Informed and encouraged by this census, Rev. George S. Pratt, then and for ten years preceding assistant at St. Michael's Church, accepted in 1898 the rectorship of the practically defunct parish of the Archangel and undertook to restore it to life, holding services first in a hall on 116th Street and later in the crypt of the Cathedral. To assist him in this enterprise, the Vestry of St. Michael's Church continued him for one year in his position as assistant at St. Michael's, setting him free, however, to devote his time to organizing the new parish. How, with many sacrifices and much struggle, he succeeded in building first a guild house and then a church on St. Nicholas Avenue and 115th Street, it is not the province of this article to relate. The formal connection of the Archangel with St. Michael's Church ceased in 1899, when Mr. Pratt resigned the position of assistant in the latter. The intimate relation resulting from affec- tion and long service has kept the two parishes in close touch ever since. In 1907, All Souls' Church having sold its property on Madison Avenue and combined
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Churches in Oregon
with the Church of the Archangel, the latter as a name finally passed out of existence, All Souls' taking its place.
IX. Trinity Church, Portland, Oregon .- For com- pleteness sake we may make mention here of Trinity Church, Portland, Oregon, inasmuch as it was through the loan by St. Michael's Church of its rector, Rev. William Richmond, to the Mission Board to serve in Oregon that this church was founded. The ac- count of that mission, with the foundation of Trinity Church and other churches in Oregon, will be found in the chapter on the life of the Rev. William Rich- mond, in a previous part of this volume.
CHAPTER XV
INSTITUTIONS
I. The New York Protestant Episcopal City Mis- sion Society .- As narrated elsewhere this Society was established in 1831 with the Bishop of the Diocese, Bishop Onderdonk, as its head, and the rector of Grace Church, Dr. Wainwright, as the chairman of its Executive Committee, and incorporated in 1833, Gideon Lee, a vestryman of St. Michael's Church, and then mayor of the city, being one of the incorporators. On the Board of Managers were the rector of St. Michael's and four laymen representing that parish. The object of this Society was declared to be
to provide, by building, purchase, hiring, or otherwise, at different points in the City of New York, churches in which the seats shall be free, and mission-houses for the poor and afflicted; and also to provide suitable clergymen and other persons to act as missionaries and assistants in and about the said churches and mission houses.
Its actual work was to establish free churches or rather free chapels for people of the middle class who were unwilling or unable to pay pew-rent in the churches of those days. Sixteen years later this Society passed out of existence, the richer churches of New York having by that time established free chapels of their own, engaged in the support of which they were un-
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4II
Origin of City Mission
willing to contribute towards the maintenance of a separate organization to provide such chapels. The chapels already in existence were, therefore, organized as independent churches and left to care for themselves, and the Society, having wound up its affairs, ceased operations. In that same year, 1847, the Rev. T. M. Peters was ordained deacon and became assistant to Rev. William Richmond of St. Michael's and St. Mary's. He thus describes the origin of the new Mission to Public Institutions which sprang up in the place of the first City Mission Society1 :
Four of five of the City Rectors had at that time adopted the practice, then recently introduced, of opening their churches for Daily Prayer.
The late Rev. William Richmond, Rector of St. Michael's Church, Bloomingdale, was stimulated in his devotion by the sight of the readiness of men who voluntarily under- took a somewhat confining task, far beyond what was generally considered a Rector's or Pastor's necessary duty. "These Clergy," said he, "certainly present the appearance of a devotion and self-denial above those of the larger portion of their brethren." Mr. Richmond was always in sympathy with work and workers as such, yet was not altogether of accord in theological sentiment with those to whom we now refer. Willing to undertake any labor which should redound to the glory of God, or which might comfort and strengthen the souls of pilgrim mortals, he yet had no inclination to open his church for a Daily Service at which but two or three members of the congre- gation, and they among the most devout, could or would attend. "I will not shrink from that labor," thought he, "but will bestow it upon the larger number-upon the greater sinner-the neglected outcast." He accordingly proposed to his Assistant that they should each take from
1 The Gradual Growth of Charities, a pamphlet printed for the City Mission Society in 1873.
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Annals of St. Michael's
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, alms-houses, or Asylums.
The work thus begun was carried on at first as a part of the parochial work of St. Michael's Church; then for a few years upon a larger scale as the Mission to Public Institutions, supported partly by contribu- tions of members of St. Michael's parish, partly by gifts from outside friends, and partly by an annual donation from the Parochial Aid Society. Little by little there were added to the staff of St. Michael's Church, by whom the work was first begun, clergymen engaged as missionaries, with one or two volunteers, and some devoted laymen, who conducted services in the different institutions according to a form prepared for the purpose by the Rev. T. M. Peters. The first report of the Mission to Public Institutions to the Diocesan Con- vention was made in 1853, and from that year onward to 1864 its reports are printed regularly in the Journal.
By that time the work had became so large that it seemed desirable to place it under the charge of an incorporated organization immediately re- sponsible to the Bishop of the Diocese. The charter of the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society, secured in 1833, was such an admirable one that it seemed best to use that, a few necessary changes having been secured from the Legislature, rather than to create a new corporation under a new charter. Accordingly the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society was technically revived, the necessary changes in the charter obtained,1 and at a meeting
1 The change of charter was not actually obtained until March 16, 1866.
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A Stigma Removed
held in Calvary Church, in 1864, the Mission to Public Institutions went out of existence, the members of that mission joining with others invited for the purpose to form the new Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society. Dr. Peters became the chairman of the Executive Committee of the new society, and its prac- tical head and director, and such he continued to be until the day of his death, combining the charge of this great work with his parochial activities at St. Michael's. The effect of the Society upon the Church in New York at large is described in its report to the Convention of 1882 as follows:
In the distant past, when this work began, "Our Church," as one truly said, "lay under a sore reproach. It was the Church of a class, of the rich and fashionable."
This Society undertook to break up that state of things and bring "our principles, our Prayer-book, our institu- tions, to the knowledge of the working classes, and the brethren of low degree, by founding and supporting free churches, and thus extending the bounds of our Christian family." The effort was successful, the stigma was effaced. "Not content with this, it held out the arm and hand to the poorest and lowest among us, entering in sublime faith, self-denial and patience into the darkest and saddest of all the ways of misery, vice and sin."
It may be added that the stigma of being the Church of a class, of the rich and fashionable, has been re- moved largely through the work of St. Michael's parish and its rectors.
At the time of Dr. Peters's death the Executive Com- mittee of the City Mission Society spread this beau- tiful minute upon their records:
In loving memory of the Ven. Thomas McClure Peters, S. T. D., Archdeacon of New York, the executive committee of the City Mission Society place this minute upon the
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Annals of St. Michael's
journal of their proceedings. A long life, devoted to the service of God, the Church and his brethren, forms the happy record of this faithful priest and pastor. Born June 6, 1821, he left us Aug. 13, 1893, having more than fulfilled the three-score years and ten, his eye undimmed and his natural force unabated. Up to the last day of his life he was in the full exercise of his varied offices of religion, charity and mercy, and his departure realized Bishop Andrews's description of an enviable transit, being "with- out sin, without shame and without pain." Lying down to rest, after a day of activity, he slept, and, so far as is known, without a struggle or a pang, he passed into the light of the presence of the Master.
Dr. Peters was graduated at Yale, and received from that ancient university the honor of the doctorate in theology. He studied at the General Theological Seminary, and was enrolled among its eminent alumni. He began his work as a lay reader in the parish of St. Michael in 1842, became in time its rector, kept the fiftieth anniversary of his connec- tion with the parish, December, 1892. He had no other parochial connection; he was identified with St. Michael's for half a century. He was constant in devotion to the work of Church extension, and for many years prac- tically the head of the City Mission Society. In the year 1891 he was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of New York, and in 1892, upon the resig- nation of the Ven. Alex. Mackay-Smith and his removal to Washington, Dr. Peters was appointed Archdeacon of New York, an office which he was peculiarly qualified to fill. He was also connected with the "House of Rest for Consumptives," where his services and counsel were highly valued.
But perhaps in all his varied work none was more sympathetically and affectionately done than that among the children. It was he who founded "The Sheltering Arms." He also saved "The Children's Fold" at a critical moment in which, but for his interposition and skilful
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A Christian Funeral
conduct of affairs, it would have disappeared from the list of our Church charities; he was at the same time in charge of another institution of the same class, the "Shepherd's Fold." In the Leake and Watts Orphan House, situated very near St. Michael's Church, he took a deep interest, and was for many years a power in that admirable institu- tion, though not officially connected with it; he was the confidant of the superintendent, Mr. Guest, the welcomed counsellor and adviser of the trustees, and the personal and faithful friend of the little objects of the trust, to whom he gave a cordial welcome in his parish church, where, until the removal to Yonkers, the officers and inmates were regular attendants.
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