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 4
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"John and Jane, both slaves of William A. Davis, married on Sunday evening, July 14, 1816, with the consent of their master and at the request of their mistress."
Besides these domestic slaves, there were also in parts of the city considerable colonies of free blacks. Some of these were very poor, existing on the border of vagrancy and crime. There was a settlement of these poor blacks at Yorkville, as the village which sprang up below Hamilton Square was called. Later we find a considerable number of colored people mingled with the poorer class of whites, living in the waste lands of what is now Central Park. To these from the outset it became the duty of the twin churches of St. Michael and St. James to minister.
It should perhaps be added that there was also a considerable number of highly self-respecting colored people in the city at that time, all or most of whom were by tradition Churchmen. So, in 1809, we find from the Convention Journal that "the Africans petitioned for the ordination of a person of color to take charge of a congregation of colored people." This was refused, but in 1810 a colored lay reader was provided. In 1819 this congregation had grown so important that St. Philip's Church for colored people was consecrated in Collect Street, the building having been erected principally by their own mechan- ics; and in 1821 Peter Williams, colored, was ordained deacon of that church.
With the election of Dr. Hobart as bishop,1 the
1 He was consecrated bishop-coadjutor May 29, 1811, and be- came the bishop of the diocese February 27, 1816, on the death of Bishop Moore.
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Annals of St. Michael's
Church in New York found a real leader and soon there- after began to assume a more aggressive and a more missionary attitude. Before his ordination, while still assistant minister at Trinity, Dr. Hobart had begun to issue didactic treatises for the education of Churchmen, and had founded a periodical entitled The Churchman's Magazine for the same purpose. He was also one of the founders of the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, and an active agent in the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Theologi- cal Society, the intention of which was to spread Church principles and help to prepare ministers for the Church. He was a keen controversialist and engaged in numerous controversies, the most famous of which was with Dr. Mason, the Presbyterian presi- dent of Columbia College.
As bishop his forceful character and aggressive churchmanship soon made a marked impression on the Church and the community. It must be frankly confessed that in some points his churchmanship was distinctly narrow: so, in his Convention address of 1822, he opposes Bible societies not under the control of the Church, and urges Churchmen not to unite in the study or the circulation of the Bible with heretics. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the particular method which he pursued tended to the immediate increase of the Church, and even the ex- clusiveness which he displayed in urging her claims made a strong impression on men's minds. In 1816 William Richmond, then a law student at Schenectady, was brought into the Church by precisely this presentation of her claims and became a student of theology under Bishop Hobart's direction, with the English Fathers as his text-books; and this was only one case out of a
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A Theological Seminary
number. It should be added that Bishop Hobart was a man of intense missionary zeal and that his patriot- ism was as fervid as his churchmanship. Both of these things appealed strongly to the community and helped greatly in securing a favorable hearing for his views on ecclesiastical subjects. All in all he was admirably fitted to present the Church to the men of his day.
Bishop Hobart was early impressed with the need of establishing Church colleges and especially a theological school for the purpose of training young men for the ministry. He undertook to establish such a school in New York, and in this undertaking he found an active supporter in the rector of St. Michael's and St. James's, and a willing co-operation on the part of the vestries of those churches, who granted Mr. Jarvis a leave of absence in 1817 to collect funds for the pro- posed Theological Seminary. Mr. Jarvis was rapidly becoming a man of prominence in the Church, and when, in the autumn of the same year, Dr. Berrian, rector of Trinity Church, was granted a leave of absence, he and Mr. Johnston of Newtown were engaged to officiate in that parish on Sunday afternoons for six months during his absence. In the following year he was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese, and in 1819 he was appointed professor of biblical learning in the new General Theological Seminary in New York, for which he had helped to collect the funds. On May 22d, of that year he re- signed his rectorship of St. Michael's and St. James's, to take effect, as far as salary was concerned, on the first day of April preceding. He continued, however, to serve both churches, pending the appointment of a successor, until June 1820, in connection, apparently,
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Annals of St. Michael's
with his professorial duties at the General Seminary, and his salary as rector was in fact continued until that date. His additional duties do not seem to have resulted in a diminution of his parochial labors. In 1817 he appears to have commenced evening ser- vices in St. Michael's, which, with the afternoon ser- vice at St. James's, made three services a Sunday. In 1819 he began a work of church extension, holding occasional services and administering on one occasion the sacrament of baptism at the schoolhouse in Fort Washington, and holding services at the house of Mrs. Finlay in Manhattanville, both settlements of poor people. It is worth noting that this commence- ment of missionary activities by the rector of St. Michael's parish immediately followed the establish- ment in the diocese at large of the Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society, founded to support Bishop Hobart's efforts to plant the Church in the newly settled western portion of the State. Parish and diocese were both beginning to awake to their opportunity and their obligation.
Dr. Jarvis was a devoted and extremely conscientious parish priest. He tried to fulfil precisely the duties which canons and rubrics prescribed. He was evidently held in high affection and esteem by his parishioners, and on March 25, 1820, the Vestry of St. Michael's voted the sum of $250 to be invested in a service of plate, to be given to him, as a token of gratitude for his services and of regard for his character. That their sentiments were genuine and lasting is shown by the way in which many years afterwards, when the news of the death of their former rector reached the parish, a special meeting of the vestry was convened to pass appropriate resolutions of sympathy and regret.
CHAPTER III
Covers the First Rectorship of the Rev. William Richmond and the Rectorship of the Rev. James Cook Richmond, 1820-1842, Including also the History of St. Michael's Charity School.
T HANKS to the willingness of Dr. Jarvis to con- tinue his services at St. Michael's and St. James's, after his formal resignation and his appointment to a professorship in the Theological Seminary, there was no vacancy between his departure and the acces- sion of his successor. A committee of the two churches, appointed to select a joint rector, extended an invita- tion, May 24, 1820, to the Rev. William Richmond, then of Philadelphia, to become their minister, and, in the event of his receiving priest's orders, their rector, at a salary of $1500, including the grant of $700 from Trinity Church, each of the two churches undertaking to pay an equal share of the remainder. Mr. Rich- mond's acceptance is dated June 3, 1820, and he actually assumed charge at the close of the same month, Dr. Jarvis's last service dating June 2Ist.
At the time of Mr. Richmond's accession New York had ceased to feel the evil results of the War of 1812, and a new period of industrial and commercial pros- perity had set in. In 1816 the first line of packets was started, establishing a regular connection between New York and the old world. In 1817 the Erie Canal was begun, which, completed in 1825, by establishing
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Annals of St. Michael's
water communication with the Great Lakes and the West, gave New York that commercial supremacy which she has ever since maintained and increased. The city had begun to spread northward, and in 1823 it was necessary to remove the Potter's Field from Washington Square, where it was estimated that, up to that time, 125,000 strangers had been interred, to Bryant Square. It had also begun to accumulate wealth, and to make itself more comfortable in its municipal and domestic arrangements. Even Bloom- ingdale began to feel the effects of the new era of progress. In 1819 a stage line was established, con- necting it with the city, the stages starting from Tryon Row, by Chambers Street, every forty minutes and ending their journey at Manhattanville, where Mr. Schieffelin, with his brothers-in-law, Lawrence and Buckley, had laid out a village and commenced to sell lots for houses. Bloomingdale had also been selected by the New York Hospital Society as the location for the great new asylum for the insane, which was completed in 1821, occupying the present site of Columbia University. The church records show, also, the advent of new families who had built or acquired country seats in Bloomingdale; but of this hereafter.
As already pointed out, the effects of the aggressive leadership of Bishop Hobart were beginning to be felt in the Diocese of New York, and especially in the Church in New York City. Between 1811 and 1820 no new churches had been organized or built in that city. In the latter year St. Luke's parish was organ- ized and in the following year a church built on Hudson Street. In 1822 a new building was erected for Christ Church. In 1823 St. Thomas's Church was organized; and from that time on almost every year witnessed the
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Bishop Hobart's Leadership
organization of a new parish or the erection of a new church. In 1819 Sunday-schools are first mentioned in the Convention Journal.1 By 1822 it appears, from the same source, that Sunday-schools are in operation in a number of the New York parishes; and by 1827 a general Episcopal Sunday-school Union has been formed, with plans of instruction and text-books in preparation. This, like Bishop Hobart's work in general, was regarded with suspicion by the Low Churchmen of the dioceses farther southward. Bishop Hobart, on his part, regarded their churchmanship with equal apprehension, and in his Convention address of 1827 he took occasion to condemn the extreme Low- Church movement then in progress in Philadelphia. It was the day of party strife within and without the Church.
There had been a controversy between Bishop Hobart and the General Convention with regard to the establishment of a theological seminary. Bishop Hobart desired to have the seminary in New York, and to establish it on churchly lines. Unless he could establish it on such lines he preferred to maintain his own school; and he did, in fact, at the outset, establish his own theological seminary in New York City, with a branch at Geneva, where he also founded an academy, and then, in 1822, a college (now Hobart College). As the Church could not support a general seminary without New York, so it was obliged finally to accept
The Sunday School was yet upon trial, and was on the whole more secular than religious. The New York Sunday School Society was founded through Bishop Hobart in 1817 for the pur- pose of introducing Church doctrine in the place of " non-sectarian" instruction. Later the Sunday School came into great favor with the Evangelicals; and in 1853 Bishop Doane of New Jersey attacks it as destructive of home training of children .- McCON- NELL, History of the American Church.
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Annals of St. Michael's
his terms, and his theological school in New York became in fact the General Theological Seminary. Under Bishop Hobart's lead, the Church in New York was advancing by leaps and bounds, while elsewhere it was almost stationary.
Attention has already been called to Bishop Ho- bart's missionary work and the organization of the New York Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society. The latter played an important part in arousing and or- ganizing the missionary spirit among the various parishes of the diocese. Branches were organized in several of the city churches-Grace, Zion, Christ, St. John's and St. Paul's Chapels,-and the sum of $1000 annually, which was considerable for the Church of that day (a missionary's salary was only $150), was thus contributed to provide missionaries for the outlying parts of the State. The Church at large also was beginning to awake to its missionary responsibilities, and at the General Convention of 1822 the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was organized.
It was at the middle of Bishop Hobart's episcopate, when he was just beginning to reap the results of his toil, that his former pupil, Mr. Richmond, entered upon his duties at St. Michael's. Like his teacher he, too, was full of the missionary spirit, but unlike him, he never showed any interest in theological contro- versy and took no part in partisan strife. He had been for eighteen months a missionary in Pennsylvania; and, from the outset, he regarded his work at St. Michael's from the missionary rather than the paro- chial view-point. The field to which he was called to minister was, in his understanding, not merely the small congregations of St. Michael's and St. James's, but the whole territory from 14th Street on the south to St.
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Organizing New Churches
Peter's, Westchester, and St. John's, Yonkers, on the north.
There was no case of distress or sickness occurring in the region which extended as far up as the Harlem River and in the lower part of what was then Westchester County, which failed to meet a personal response from Mr. Rich- mond. He was sometimes profuse, but never lacking in his supply of the wants of the destitute, and many a humble home was blest by his frequent ministrations at the time of illness and death. It was his usage to hold services here and there in private houses, where he could thus reach those who gave distance from church as an excuse for their non-attendance, or who were too care- less and unconcerned to present themselves at stated worship.1
Wherever there was a settlement within this region, he proceeded as soon as practicable to organize a new church. There was at Manhattanville a hamlet of about fifteen houses, the centre of a somewhat larger population, chiefly of poor people. Here, as already stated, Dr. Jarvis had held an occasional service. Mr. Richmond carried on his work, first by holding more frequent services, and, finally, by organizing a parish, which was incorporated in 1824. Mr. Jacob Schieffelin, one of the original pewholders and vestrymen of St. Michael's having given the land for the erection of a church building, St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, was built and consecrated in 1826.
There was another hamlet of poor people farther north at Fort Washington. Here, also, Dr. Jarvis had held occasional services. Mr. Richmond began a regular mission in the Fort Washington school-house, after-
1 From a note to a sermon of Rev. C. B. Smith, D.D., preached on the seventieth anniversary of the founding of St. James's.
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Annals of St. Michael's
wards destroyed by fire, finally organizing St. Ann's Church, which was incorporated in 1827. In both these enterprises he had the support and active co- operation of St. Michael's parish, the wardens and vestrymen of the latter serving as officers of the new churches and otherwise assisting Mr. Richmond in his work. It must be added, however, that there were some members of the congregation to whom this broad policy of church extension appeared objectionable. They were afraid that, by the erection of new churches, the strength of the original parish would be diminished, since those residing in the neighborhood of the new church would naturally attend and support that. Mr. Richmond's answer always was: "For every one leaving my church there will be eight or ten in the new church, and thus the Church at large is strength- ened rather than made weak; and besides, every congre- gation becomes at once a centre of charity and good works, and therefore the poor are benefited."1
On the east side of Mr. Richmond's parish two more considerable settlements existed, the one, Harlem, very old, the latter, Yorkville, of recent creation. A missionary school work had been commenced among the colored people in Yorkville during the rectorship of Mr. Jarvis. As the place increased in size, there came to be a considerable population of white people at this point. These were of a different class from the attendants at St. James's Church, and partly for that reason and partly because of the distance they were unwilling to attend the services in the parish church. Apparently it was with a view to providing for these villages that, in 1826, Mr. Richmond proposed to the vestry of St. James's to open that church twice on Sun-
1 Northender, 1867.
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Purchase of School Site
day instead of once, as heretofore. The next year, the winter of 1827-28, the church was open through the winter for the first time. To enable him to do this additional work the vestries of the two churches voted to authorize him to engage an assistant, St. Michael's providing that Mr. Richmond should him- self find said assistant's salary, and St. James's, as more immediately concerned, voting him $100 to be used for that purpose. Mr. Richmond engaged as his assistant Rev. E. D. Griffin, in 1827, and as, in spite of all his efforts, the people of Yorkville would not come to St. James's, he went to them, first holding mission services in such rooms as he could secure, and finally, in 1828, organizing a church in that village. In the following year with the Rev. Mr. Hinton, whom he had engaged as an assistant for this purpose, he organized St. Andrew's Church, Harlem. This church became at once self-supporting, maintaining its own rector; the others remained dependencies of St. Michael's during Mr. Richmond's first rectorship. A further history of the organization of all these churches and some account of their later development will be found in another chapter.
While Mr. Richmond was thus engaged in extending the work of the Church over a larger area and estab- lishing new parishes to cover the upper part of the city, St. Michael's Church was showing signs of internal progress. In 1820 a school site, consisting of a little over an acre of land with a small house, situated at 103d and 104th Streets near Amsterdam Avenue, on what was then Clendening Lane, was leased, and finally, in 1825, purchased for $237; but of the history and maintenance of this school hereafter. In 1823 the church increased the salary of the rector by $150,
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Annals of St. Michael's
on the occasion of his marriage, and in addition paid $50 to Rev. Manton Eastburn, later Bishop of Massa- chusetts, for assistance rendered to Mr. Richmond, apparently in connection with the same event. About this time St. Mark's and others of the city churches were introducing organs, and in 1823 St. Michael's Vestry voted to do the same. The organ and a gallery at the west end of the church to contain the same were finally completed in 1825, the gallery at an expense of $219.50 and the organ at a cost of $325, the mason work, etc., amounting to $32.38 extra. The introduction of an organ meant a radical change and a vast improvement in the method of conducting the service. Clerks still continued to be appointed until 1833, to lead the re- sponses, but the musical part of the services was placed in the hands of a choirmaster and organist, at first volunteers, and then salaried employees of the Church.1
In spite of the extra expense of building the organ and gallery, which was met in part by a subscription, the treasurer's report in that year shows a balance on the credit side of $81.43, the receipts amounting to $1886 and the expenditures to $1804.82. This report was presented at the annual meeting, April 8, 1825. A little more than two months later, July 16th, 1825, a special meeting of the Vestry was called at the office of the secretary,, Mr. Frederick DePeyster, Jr., 24
1 The first organist at St. Michael's appears to have been Miss Emeline Davis, daughter of William A. Davis, one of the wardens of the church. Her services were voluntary, and ceased, ap- parently, in 1831, some time after her marriage to Dr. A. V. Williams, then a vestryman. On the 24th of June of that year the Vestry voted a testimonial, not to exceed $100, to Mrs. A. V. Williams, for "superintending the choir for several years." The first mention of a salary for an organist occurs in 1839, when $102 is appropriated for that purpose.
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Trinity Withdraws Aid
Broad Street, to consider the following resolutions passed by the vestry of Trinity Church :
Resolved: That the annual allowance to St. Michael's Church be hereafter restricted to the difference between the sum of Seventeen Hundred dollars, and the aggregate amount of the Rents which are now payable, or which hereafter on any renewal of the Leases may become pay- able, on the six lots of land heretofore granted to that Church, and on the four lots of land heretofore granted to St. James' Church, and when and as soon as the said Rents shall aggregately amount to Seventeen Hundred dollars, that the said Annual allowance to St. Michael's Church be wholly discontinued.
This would have meant an immediate reduction of the grant to St. James's and St. Michael's from $700 to $350 or $300, and as the receipts and expenditures in both churches very nearly balanced, there would have been a deficit of some $300 to make good for the current year. A committee of three was appointed to confer with a similar committee to be appointed by St. James's Church, and the following memorial, which is worthy of printing in full, because of its reference to the history of the Church and its general exposition of the conditions of the parish as then existing, was adopted by that committee and presented to the corpora- tion of Trinity Church on the 12th of December fol- lowing :
MEMORIAL
To the Right Rev. the Rector, Church Wardens, & Vestrymen. of Trinity Church.
GENTLEMEN :
We the undersigned appointed by the respective Vestries:
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Annals of St. Michael's
of St. Michael's Church Bloomingdale, and St. James's Hamilton Square to address your respectable body, on the subject of your Resolution relative to the present curtailment, and eventual recall of the Donation, made by Trinity Corporation to the said Churches, and to pray for a reconsideration of the same.
Respectfully Represent
That the first intimation of the said Resolution as entered on the minutes of your meeting of the 13th June last, was on the quarterly application of the Treasurer of the former Church to the Comptroller of your Board, some- time subsequent to its adoption: and that in consequence of the lateness of the then unofficial communication of a matter so materially affecting the existing engagements of the said Churches with their Rector; their present in- tegrity; and future prospects; the opportunity was lost of urging their claims to a continuance of your patronage, and of explaining their actual situation, previous to any definite decision by your Vestry in their case.
It is therefore to both of these points of view, the under- signed beg leave earnestly to solicit your serious attention; and in submitting the following statement in reference thereto, we confidently trust that the appeal predicated thereof, and which is now made to the Justice and Maternal piety of Trinity Church, will upon a review of the whole subject, lead to the rescinding of a Resolution fraught with such evil consequences to the Churches we represent; to the very cause, she herself, as the head and life of this diocese, has in hand; and in opposition to the sacred bene- fits of which fortune has made her the guardian, as well as the dispenser.
It is deemed unnecessary to detail here the nature and extent of the relief granted prior to the Ist of February 1813. It is sufficient for us to acknowledge its liberality and important consequences.
By a resolution of that date, exclusive of donations of
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Need of Annual Grant
$700 towards the payment of the debts of St. Michael's Church, and of $800 to St. James' Church, to "satisfy its necessities;" an additional donation was granted to the former, for the specific purpose of supporting the Minister; on the condition however that the Churches should remain united. And from your minutes of 12th February 1816, it appears that the allowances granted to the different Clergy and Congregations on this Island, not belonging to Trinity Church Corporation, were continued until the further order of your Vestry.
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