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 31
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A Neighbor hood Work
not so direct as that of the preceding. It has been the object of the present rector, so far as possible, to organize neighborhood associations for those works which can and should be undertaken by the whole community, St. Michael's Church giving such assistance as lies in its power, but not undertaking the work as parochial work or claiming exclusive control.
In the year book of 1894 one of the needs to which the attention of the congregation was called was a Day Nursery and Kindergarten. The public schools did not at that time provide for the instruction of the youngest children. In the case of poor families, where the mothers had to go out to work, the lack of some place to which to send the little children was a real hardship, both to the mothers and the children. Either the children had to be left to play on the street all day or be shut up in the apartment. Where the chil- dren were still younger the hardship was even greater. We found many cases where the mother might be able to work for the support of the family, if there were some place in which she could leave her little baby, too im- mature even for a kindergarten, during working hours. With what she could earn she could not afford to pay to have the child cared for by some person hired for the purpose. What was needed was a crêche or day nursery. Several ladies in St. Michael's Church became interested in this field and offered either to work in the day nur- sery, if one could be started, or to give money towards its support.
A meeting was finally called at one of the buildings then used as a temporary parish house, the present rectory, in which were included not only ladies from St. Michael's Church but also ladies from the Protestant churches in the neighborhood, from the Roman Catho-
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Annals of St. Michael's
lic Church of the Holy Name, and others. As a result of this meeting, the Bloomingdale Day Nursery and Kindergarten was organized in 1895, with a board of trustees, of which Mrs. John P. Peters, of St. Michael's, was the president, representing the community. at large, there being, in addition to the representatives of all the Christian churches hereabouts, a prominent Jewish lady on the board. In addition an advisory committee of men was formed, of which one of the vestrymen of this church was made chairman. St. Michael's Church gave free of rent the use of the building in which the meeting was held, then known as 223 West 99th Street, and there for about a year the Bloomingdale Day Nursery and Kindergarten was housed. Later the trustees rented a house on 99th Street, east of Amsterdam Avenue, No. 154, and there the Day Nursery is still located, being now the owner of the building. With the extension of age in the public schools downward, the kindergarten became unneces- sary and was dropped. The present corporate title of the institution is The Bloomingdale Day Nursery, and the president of the institution at the present time is Mrs. Richard L. Hartley, wife of the pastor of Hope Baptist Church.
The Day Nursery does a valuable work for the neighborhood in general, and for many of the poor women of this parish in particular. As a neighbor- hood institution it has no direct connection with this church, but we view it with peculiar affection as an institution in whose founding we were concerned. Some of the members of this parish are on its board of trustees, some are contributors to its support, and every Christmas the children of the Sunday School make a donation in kind, bringing and presenting at
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Instigating a Library
the altar condensed milk, cereals, soap, toys, and every- thing that in their judgment and in the judgment of their mothers is desirable for the little children in The Bloomingdale Day Nursery.
IX. Bloomingdale Free Circulating Library. In the same year in which attention was called to the need of a Day Nursery and Kindergarten in the year book of the parish attention was also called to the need of a Parish Library. As a result the year book of 1895 reports the organization of such a library, entitled St. Michael's Free Circulating Library, the libraries of the various guilds of the parish having been con- solidated to form the nucleus of the same. This library contained about 700 volumes, largely standard works, but with very few recent books. It was lodged in one of the buildings used as a temporary parish house, 223 West 99th Street, and was opened on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 P.M. and Fridays from 3 to 5 P.M. There was at that time no library of any sort in this neighborhood, that is to say outside of the Sunday School libraries of the various churches. St. Michael's Free Circulat- ing Library was a very feeble attempt to provide a library not only for the parish but also for the neighborhood. One of our vestrymen, Mr. Berrien Keyser, was particularly interested in this work and gave his services in organizing and conducting the library. We hoped to develop it in due time, and in the Parish House plans adopted at that time we laid out an especially large and fine room for our library. It was a hard task raising money for that Parish House, and it was evidently going to be a still harder task to raise the money to support it when built. When should we have our library established on a really worthy basis to serve the neighborhood?
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Annals of St. Michael's
At this time the New York Free Circulating Library was establishing libraries in various parts of the city, and as it appeared to Mr. Keyser and the rector that the Bloomingdale neighborhood was sufficiently important to render it advisable to establish a branch here, they decided to lay the whole case before the authorities of that institution. The case was accordingly presented to the head librarian and by him to the trustees. The church offered to provide rooms for the library in one of the buildings used by it as a temporary parish house, to give to the library all of the books in its possession, and to guarantee if necessary to raise a thousand dollars additional toward the expenses in the first year of its existence. After a careful examination of the neigh- borhood, on the recommendation of the head librarian, the trustees of the library decided to try the experiment. They accepted the books from St. Michael's Church and the use of the quarters offered for a month or so, to enable the librarians to do the necessary work of bind- ing, cataloguing, etc., but hired permanent quarters in the immediate neighborhood of St. Michael's, on the corner of 100th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and started there in 1896 the new branch of the New York Free Circulating Library. They did not exact the money guarantee which the church had offered, but in point of fact some hundreds of dollars were collected in the church or from its friends in the neighborhood for the library. The experiment proved so successful, this branch having a larger circulation in the second year than any branch in the city, that the trustees proceeded to erect a fine building on 100th Street just behind St. Michael's Parish House. The name given to the library, at our suggestion, was The Bloomingdale Branch of the New York Free Circulating Library.
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Out-of-door Playgrounds
As soon as the Bloomingdale Library was started, it being the judgment of the rector of this church that the day of the old-fashioned Sunday School library for Sunday School children had passed, the books of St. Michael's Sunday School library, about 400 in number, were also passed over to the Bloomingdale Library on condition that it should be opened Sunday afternoons; and it was in fact so opened for some years, until the reduction of the city appropriation rendered it unable to pay for the extra work. The relation of this institu- tion to St. Michael's, as will be seen, is only one of instigation, with some slight assistance and support.
X. Neighborhood Social and Industrial Club. In 1898 a young lady of the neighborhood, represent- ing the Playground Committee of the Social Reform Club, called on the rector to ask his assistance in providing an out-of-door playground for children. The previous year a Bulgarian, Mr. Tzanoff, had started a movement in Philadelphia to utilize the grounds about the schoolhouses and the vacant lots for playgrounds in order to take the children off the streets. There were placed sandheaps, awnings, benches, parallel bars, and similar simple and inex- pensive equipment, and kindergartners, inspectors, and helpers were provided to overlook the sports, keep order, and play with the children. It proved an admirable work, a great blessing to working mothers who were able to take or send little children to these playgrounds while they themselves went out to work for the day; a boon to sick and weakly and lonesome children who found there rest, and sports in which they might take part; and a humanizing and elevating influence for the coarse children who form street gangs largely be- cause they do not know anything better to do with
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Annals of St. Michael's
themselves. The plan having proved so successful in Philadelphia, Mr. Tzanoff was trying to do the same thing for New York and the Social Reform Club, of which the rector was himself a member, was supporting him in his effort, having appointed a committee for that purpose.
After an investigation of all the available vacant lots in the neighborhood, we secured from the owner the use of the block between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway and 94th and 95th streets. A committee of the local auxiliary of the Federation of Churches was formed and a playground was conducted for about two months in that summer for some 1200 children. Then an association was formed to provide out-of- door playgrounds in the future, with a member of St. Michael's Church, the late Mrs. George E. Poole, at its head, succeeded later by Mrs. Clarence Burns, and for a number of years such playgrounds were provided, first, at the site above named, and then on twelve lots on the south side of 99th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue, property belonging to the Merriam estate. The number of children cared for at the last-named site reached 3000. The police testified to the admirable result of the work done by the out-of-door playgrounds in reducing the number of petty thefts and the annoyances of one sort and another by children in the streets, and the shopkeepers of the neighborhood, appreciating the advantage of the playground to them in this direction, were among the contributors to its support. The work was so evidently needed and accomplished such good results that finally the Board of Education was induced to take it up and establish summer schools and play- grounds at different points throughout the city. This,
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The Neighborhood Club
with the building up of the vacant lots in this neigh- borhood, led finally to the abandonment of the play- ground itself in 1904. During part of this time the playground had been connected with the local auxiliary of the Federation of Churches, of which the rector of St. Michael's was president; and during the whole period the rector of St. Michael's Church had guaran- teed any deficit, and the meetings of the organization had been held in St. Michael's Parish House.
The experiences of the playground demonstrated the need of clubs and associations for both boys and girls of the neighborhood who were not included in church organizations already existing. The boys, as they grew up, became hoodlums, simply because they had no place to play, and no proper channel into which to direct their energies. The attempt to provide club rooms and an organization for them has not up to the present met with success, partly from a lack of the right sort of workers. In the case of the girls, the ladies found that as they began to go into employ- ment, first as cash girls and then as shop girls, they needed and sought places of amusement in the even- ings, and that not a few of them were beginning to fre- quent the dance halls which were springing up in connection with saloons, especially in the neighborhood of Iroth Street. The rector of this church offered the Parish House one evening a week as a club house for these girls if the ladies would form an organization to take care of them, provide proper amusement, classes of instruction for those who needed it, and the like. At first the ladies feared lest, many of the girls being Roman Catholics by origin and in name, they might refuse to come into a building which belonged to a Protestant Church. After some hesitation, how-
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Annals of St. Michael's
ever, no other place being available, they agreed to make the experiment. It soon proved that no such prejudice existed and three years ago the Neighborhood Social and Industrial Club was organized, Mrs. Clarence Burns at its head, with a membership of 210 girls. Here the girls, none or almost none of whom belong to this church, meet one evening in each week to attend classes, dance or have a good time as the case may be.
One incident will show what this Club and the Parish House where it meets mean in the lives of some of these girls. A girl whom the clergy of this parish did not know came here with a young man to be married. It turned out that, having come to this city from Connecticut to work in a factory, without home or friends or any place to spend her evenings, she had somehow found her way into the Neighborhood Club. Now that she was to be married she had come back to be married in the one place which had stood in her experience for healthful and pleasant associations. Before she was married she took the young man around the Parish House from place to place, telling him what she had done here and what she had learned there, and the good times she had enjoyed in another place.
At her death Mrs. Poole left a legacy of $2000 to this Club, and the intention of the trustees is, as soon as sufficient funds are raised, to hire or purchase a building of their own, as a club-house, continuing probably to use the auditorium of the Parish House for larger gatherings once a week or less frequently as the case may be.
XI. Bloomingdale District Nurse Association .- This Association was organized in 1905, at the suggestion of Mrs. Adolphe Openhym, who is also the first Presi-
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A District Nurse
dent of the Association, to provide a district nurse for poor people of the district without regard to race or creed. Like the two preceding institutions it is on a neighborhood basis and managed by a committee of ladies. It has the same relation to St. Michael's Church as the preceding organizations, namely that it has been welcomed by that church and supported by it and by its rector to the extent of their ability, and that the Parish House has been placed at its disposal and free headquarters provided there in connection with the Clinic.
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CHAPTER XVI
ST. MICHAEL'S CEMETERY
M OST of the old churches of New York had ceme- teries connected with them, and not a few of the public squares of the New York City of to-day are the churchyards and burial grounds of the old New Yorkers of the past, not to speak of those which, like Washington Square and Bryant Square, were at different periods, Potter's Fields. When St. Michael's Church was started there were apparently two churchyards in Harlem, the Dutch Reformed and the Friends', and one cemetery of some description at Fort Washington. Besides these graveyards people buried their dead also in private cemeteries on their own grounds. A relic of this use is the grave of "The Amiable Child," near Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive; and as late as 1866 there were other similar graves to be found at various points in the upper part of the island. For the accommodation of its parishioners St. Michael's provided, at the outset, a cemetery in connection with the church in the churchyard surrounding the first building. The first record of a burial there is the following: "On Friday morning June 22nd, 1809, at St. Michael's Bloomingdale buried Joseph Armstrong Aged 2 years & 17 days the son of the Sexton of the Church-Scarf and Gloves." Mr. Bartow records
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Vaults in St. Michael's
the receipt of the customary scarf and gloves, given in connection with funerals, which the minister was expected to wear in the church service of the following Sunday. The remains of Joseph Arm- strong lie beneath the present church and his grave- stone is in the Crypt.
From the Vestry records it appears that in 1810 permission was given to Jacob Schieffelin to erect a vault in the churchyard, of which permission he does not seem to have taken advantage. Later, when he deeded to St. Mary's, Manhattanville, the land for a church, he reserved the right to erect a vault, and did in fact erect in front of that church a vault which was used by the Schieffelin family for many years. In the same year, 1810, the Vestry voted a general permission to erect vaults in St. Michael's Churchyard, 8 x 10 feet, on payment of twenty-five dollars. In 1814 there was some difficulty with the city in regard to the burial ground, and a committee consisting of Valentine Nutter and Oliver H. Hicks was appointed "to communicate with the corporation of the City relative to the burying-ground attached to the Church of St. Michael and obtain such relief as to them shall appear proper." What the difficulty was, does not appear from the records, but from the report of the committee it does appear that, whatever it was, the city had no power to give redress. The first notice of the cost of a burial in St. Michael's occurs in the Vestry minutes of August 16, 1827, when it is directed that $5.00 shall be charged for the burial of each person over 14 and $3.00 for each person under 14 years At about this time also, it became necessary to make some provision for the burial of the poor connected with the church. The church had purchased from Alderman
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Annals of St. Michael's
John R. Peters a little over an acre of ground at Clen- dining Lane and 103d Street, which was no longer re- quired for school purposes, the school having been handed over to the Public School Society. Accord- ingly, on July 12, 1828, the Vestry voted to appropriate the school-house lot for a cemetery.
From a report of a committee appointed to consider the expediency of selling a part of the old school-house property in 1864, we extract the following account of the use of this property for burial purposes:
Upon consulting the Book of Minutes of the proceedings of the Vestry of St. Michael's Church it appears that in the year 1825 the property in Clendinings lane now held by this Corporation, was purchased at a cost of $237-for the accommodation of the Parish School. In the year 1826, the Trustees of the Public School having agreed to provide for the education of the children, the Parish School was given over to their care.
At a Vestry meeting held on the 7th of April, 1825, a Committee was appointed to consider the expediency of purchasing additional ground for the burial of the dead. This Committee reporting progress & continued for two years was finally discharged Aug. 26, 1827.
On the 5th day of December 1827, at a special meeting of the Vestry Messrs. Thorne, Weyman & Jas. F. De Peyster were appointed a Committee to purchase a piece of ground opposite to St. Michael's Church. On the 2nd day of July 1828 this Committee reported that they had been unable to procure the ground designated and asked to be discharged, which request was granted. At the same meeting the three gentlemen above named were re-ap- pointed a Committee to make such disposition of the School House lot "as they should deem most advantageous and report thereon at the next call of the Vestry and also whether a suitable lot can be purchased for a Burial ground." At a Vestry Meeting held ten days later the
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Burying Ground for Poor
Committee reported that, finding their endeavors fruitless in obtaining a suitable piece of ground, they had agreed in recommending the following resolution: "Resolved That the School House lot 'be appropriated as a Cemetery, be surrounded with a stone wall & forthwith put in due order.' "
This resolution was adopted by the Vestry.
The School House Lot thus became the Cemetery of this Church & continued to be so used, as appears from the Parish Register, down to the year 1854.
In the year 1852, by a city ordinance all burying on the Island below 86th Street, excepting in family vaults was prohibited. An attempt was made at about the same time to pass a law closing all burying grounds on the Island, Trinity Cemetery excepted. The attention of some mem- bers of the Vestry being thus directed to their burying ground it was deemed by them undesirable to continue using it as a place of interment. Accordingly since the year 1852 there have been but four bodies buried in the School House lot & since the year 1854 it has ceased entirely to be used for burial purposes.
But to return to the churchyard. It was evidently the intention, when the school-house lot was appro- priated as a burial ground for the poor, that the churchyard should be reserved for the members of the congregation proper. Accordingly, on April 14, 1830, it is voted that none but pewholders or members of their
families shall be interred in the churchyard. By this time the old churchyards in the city were being filled up, many were closed as churchyards, and in those which remained the land was held at high prices. The great cemeteries of our day were all of them yet in the future. The first of these, Greenwood, was not founded until 1838. The first separate cemetery on Manhattan Island, Trinity Cemetery, was founded four years later,
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Annals of St. Michael's
in 1842, on what was then Bloomingdale Road and 155th Street, at the extreme northern limit of the projected city. Five years later, in 1847, a general cemetery law was passed. It was apparently partly the increasing lack and expense of land in the city church- yards which brought about at this period a demand for vaults in St. Michael's Churchyard. Some of the old families had doubtless also come to count this as their home church, preferring at least to be buried in the rural quiet and beauty of the charming little church- yard in Bloomingdale, rather than in a city cemetery. So it came about that between 1830 and 1834 there was a considerable demand for vaults in St. Michael's Churchyard. To this period belong the Weyman, Wag- staff, Waldo, DePeyster, Delafield, Hazzard, Chisolm, and Windust vaults. By this time also land, even in quiet little St. Michael's Churchyard, was becoming valuable, and for permission to build these vaults $150 was paid, not $25 as at an earlier date. Thirty years later, in 1865, this land had become so valuable to the church, which needed room for enlargement, erection of Sunday School building, etc., that the Vestry offered to buy in all vaults at the rate of $300 each, to which offer there seems, however, to have been no response.
In 1870 the opening of Amsterdam Avenue disturbed portions both of the Churchyard around the Church and also of the burying ground on Clendining Lane, and the following resolution was adopted by the Vestry :
Resolved, that the Treasurer be authorized to pay the amount of expense incurred in removing the remains of bodies interred in the graveyard adjoining the Church, and which may be disturbed by the work of grading the Tenth Avenue by the City authorities. The remains so disturbed
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Removal of Remains
to be deposited in the Church Cemetery at Newtown. The Clerk of the Vestry was directed to insert in one or more public newspapers notice of such removal and of names of deceased whose remains may be thus exposed.
In accordance with this resolution the clerk of the Vestry inserted the following advertisement in the New York Herald:
Saint Michael's Church, Corner Bloomingdale Road & 99th St., N. Y. City. D. T. Brown, Clerk.
In removing the bodies buried in that portion of the Old Churchyard disturbed by the laying of the Croton-water- pipes, the remains have been identified and not yet claimed, of Paul Lee, Surgeon in the British Army, died 1822, aged 63 years. Isabella Lee, died 1822, aged 63. John Cinnamon, died 1827, aged 33. Ann W. C. Froup, died 1828, aged 48. Rich'd S. Ritchie died 1836, aged 24 yrs.
These remains will be deposited for four months in the receiving vault of St. Michael's Cemetery near Astoria, L. I., to await the instructions of friends of the deceased. By Order of the Vestry.
While the Clendining Lane burying ground ceased to be used for burials in 1854, St. Michael's Churchyard continued to be so used for almost twenty years longer. The last interment of which I find record is that of Abraham Valentine Williams, son of Dr. A. V. Williams, a former warden of the church, in 1873. At the erec- tion of the new church, in 1891, the old churchyard was built into the church. Some of the old graves and vaults were opened at that time by their owners and the remains therein interred removed to other cemeteries,1 but the greater part were left undisturbed, and the old graveyard lies to-day beneath the chancel
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