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 6
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1 Final Report, 1847.
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The First Free Church
for missionary operations within the city, and a further canon was passed enjoining an annual collection in the city churches for its support. The society went into operation at once and soon became owner by purchase and gift, of "three large, commodious church build- ings," the Holy Evangelists in Van de Water Street, by purchase in 1831, the Epiphany, erected by the society in 1834, and St. Matthew's in Christopher Street, by gift, in 1842.
At the same time that this society was established to start free mission chapels, in 1831,1 St. Mary's Church was made free. In his report to the Conven- tion of that year Mr. Richmond says that he had been induced to take charge of this church in 1828, in ad- dition to his other duties, on account of its pecuniary embarrassments. "There were at that time very few families in the village in the habit of attending service. The church is now generally filled every Sunday and a considerable congregation has been present at the service and during the instruction of the Bible class on Wednesday." He obtained a missionary subscription of $50 each from six city rectors, with which to engage an assistant to officiate once on Sunday in St. Mary's and once in the village of Harlem. By means of this subscription, which amounted in all to $600, he was able to engage Mr. Hinton for this work, and the church of St. Andrew's had been erected in Harlem. In addition to this he had raised the sum of $1000, which had been applied to work in St. Mary's parish to defray the current expenses of the church and Sunday- school, to pay the interest on the mortgage and procure
1 In his Convention address of 1835, Bishop Onderdonk men- tions the consecration of St. Paul's Free Church, Brooklyn, and speaks of it as the first free church in the diocese. Actually this honor belonged to St. Mary's, Manhattanville.
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the necessary repairs and improvements. His own services, as appears elsewhere, were given gratuitously, and, in point of fact, he was a large contributor to the support of the work at St. Mary's. St. Mary's was, to all intents and purposes, a mission station of St. Michael's Church at this time, although organized as an independent parish. The aristocratic pewholders of the mother church were not prepared to make the latter free (in fact the idea of a free parish church does not seem to have been seriously proposed as yet) ; but they were willing to make St. Mary's, which was intended for the poorer population of Manhattanville and its neighborhood, free on the same principle on which, later, through the influence of the City Mission Society, other churches were to establish free chapels.
In the following year, 1832, came the first dreadful visitation of cholera, from which 3500 people died, Mr. Hinton, the rector of St. Andrew's, being among the victims.1 Mr. Richmond's activity in caring for the sick at this period attracted much attention. The city made him a health officer for his ward, with full power to spend and order as he found it necessary for the public health and the especial wants of the sick. Later, when he was leaving St. Michael's Church to take charge of Zion, the Vestry addressed to him a letter, which was also published in the Churchman, containing this passage:
We have found you at all times active, devoted and distinguished in your exertions for the welfare of your flock. Not deterred by the noisome pestilence, you have visited the sick, & fed the hungry, clothed the naked, a friend without faltering, kind, courteous & humane. Devoted to the
" The next two years were also cholera years, although the mor- tality was not so great.
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The Neglected Poor
great cause, you have labored with a spirit that never sought repose. To the poor you have preached the Gospel of Truth.
In the same year, 1832, Mr. Richmond began holding services on Sunday evenings at the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, Rev. James M. Forbes, who appears on the Convention records as an assistant minister at St. Luke's, assisting him both here and at St. Ann's, Fort Washington. These services, which were at first an experiment suggested by Mr. Richmond out of the same spirit which had made him the minister to the cholera victims, proved so successful that, in the following year, they received official recognition from the trustees of the New York Hospital; Mr. Rich- mond was made chaplain and a stipend of $75 attached to the office. From that time until the removal of the institution to White Plains, the rectors of St. Michael's continued to be chaplains of the Blooming- dale Asylum. The services at Bloomingdale may be said to be the commencement of the work of our Church in the public institutions, although some years were to pass before other institutions were added, and finally a regular organization established for the conduct of that work. What an innovation religious services in an asylum were at that time is shown by the Bishop's reference to this work, in his Convention address of 1834, after a visit paid to St. Michael's, in which Mr. Richmond took him to the asylum :
The services of the Chaplain in this interesting estab- lishment (Lunatic Asylum) are found to produce a soothing and comforting, and, it is hoped, through the Grace of God, a holy influence on the minds of the unfortunate objects of Christian sympathy for whom they are designed. The introduction of judiciously conducted religious exercises
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into such establishments, is among the best of those im- provements in the treatment of the insane, which raise our asylums to an eminence so exalted, in the estimation of reason, sensibility, and religion, above the cells of wretched- ness, terror and withering despair to which they were formerly consigned.
One of the results of the work of the City Mission Society was to call attention to the failure of the Church up to this time to fulfil its Christian mission. It had preached the Gospel not to the poor, but to the rich. In his diocesan address of 1834, Bishop Onderdonk states the case strongly and effectively in the following words :
Thousands still wander through our streets, to whom the Gospel-its word and its Church-are as strange as if there were a broad wall of adamant between it and them. Our ordinary churches, so far from inviting, virtually exclude them. Let them, then, indulge me, when I say that, easy as they may feel in the enjoyment of these spiritual privileges for which they liberally pay in their well furnished places of worship, there rests on them a heavy burden of responsibility touching the poor against whom those places are virtually barred.
It had proved that there were great numbers of people who were not reached by the eleemosynary mission chapels, an independent and self-respecting class, who could not afford to worship in the fashionable and exclusive pewed churches, but who might be capable of supporting independent churches of a more modest type if such could be created. Toward the provision of churches for this class of the community the Bishop directed attention in an interesting letter in the Church- man in 1836.
Among those who were convinced of the need of
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Bishop Advocates Free Churches
establishing churches for this class of the community was the Rev. William Richmond who was beginning to come to the conclusion, if he had not done so already, that Christian churches should be free on principle. His brother James had assisted him at St. Michael's from time to time, both prior to his ordination and also after that event, in 1834. Mr. Richmond now requested from the vestries of St. Michael's, St. James's, and St. Mary's the latter's appointment as his assistant, he to be responsible for his salary, with right of suc- cession to the rectorship in case of vacancy. His re- quest was granted but with much reluctance, and Rev. William Richmond turned his energies to the organization of a free church on the lines suggested by the Bishop. The headquarters of this movement were at Euterpean Hall, 410 Broadway, and the name given to the infant church was the Church of the Re- demption. Mr. Richmond speedily collected a con- siderable body of worshippers, and in his Convention address of 1836, the Bishop refers to him as engaged
in forming a free church in this city, that is, a church which is to be supported, not by pew-rents, but by the voluntary contributions of its attendants-the pews being all free. Such an establishment appears to be required in our city. There are those who object, on principle, to rendering the privilege of attendance at church dependent on the payment of a tax, and to graduating the eligibleness of situation in church for the comfortable hearing and seeing of the holy offices, by the ability of the worshippers to make a pecuniary return. There are very many highly respectable persons in circumstances too moderate to allow of their paying either the price or rent of good pews in our ordinary churches, but who are still anxious to pay what they can, and as they can, for the privilege of be-
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longing to a regularly organized portion of our ecclesiastical body, and are therefore, not improperly, reluctant to avail themselves of the accommodations provided by the hand of charity in our mission churches. There is constantly in this great metropolis a large body of strangers not permanently resident here, belonging to either our own communion or that of the Church of England, who find themselves often very painfully situated. They love the services of our sanctuaries and are desirous to attend them, and to have an opportunity of contributing, in the incidental way which only is open to them, to their support. They feel, however, a very natural repugnance to obtruding themselves into pews belonging to others. And it is obvious that the presence of many such as are always with us in our mission churches, would present much the same difficulty in the way of their being occupied by the poor, which, in other Churches, was deemed so strong a reason for the establishment of those of a missionary character. For this large and respectable class of our fellow Christians provision should be made. The making of it is the most important object had in view by the pro- posed erection of free churches, and I know is regarded as a most valuable provision by our brethren in the country, and will doubtless receive from them, in their occasional visits to the city, no small share of its support. And while the establishment of this species of church is thus a most excellent object in itself, it produces also a highly valuable indirect effect. There are so many whose views, or con- veniences, or interests, are met by churches in which the pews are free, that there is perpetual danger of the admirably- designed charity of our mission churches being diverted from its proper channel. Places of worship, therefore, not sustained by charity, but thrown on the voluntary support of the attendants, will, it is hoped, allow the experiment of mission churches to be fairly tried; and thus to let it be seen whether the impression, that there is among us a large body of poor to be thus provided for, and who
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Five Points
will avail themselves of the provision, which gave rise to this excellent charity, is founded on fact.
Strange as it may seem to-day, Mr. Richmond's new enterprise met with considerable opposition on the part of some of the city pastors. They seem to have felt that the establishment of free churches threatened the financial foundations of the Church, and they claimed that the enterprise was immoral, because people who could and should pay as pew-rent a proper sum for the support of a church, would, by the free church system, be led to attend churches where no payment was required and so get the Gospel for nothing. The following year, 1837, having made an arrangement with Zion Church, on behalf of his new Church of the Redemption, by which he was to become the rector of Zion Church, the congregation of the Church of the Redemption receiving free seats in the gallery of that church, Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of St. Michael's, to the evident great regret of the Vestry, evinced by the terms of their very touching communication to him on that occasion, and Rev. James Richmond became rector in his stead. Mr. Richmond evidently hoped ultimately to make Zion Church itself free, and thus establish at least one strong, independent free church, in New York. Moreover, the situation of that church, on Mott and Cross Streets, with Five Points in its immediate vicinity, appealed strongly to his missionary zeal. Five Points was at that time, and for many years later, the centre of the misery and crime of the city. It had been the focus and breeding ground of the riots of 1835, and six years later Dickens thus described its horrors:
Near the Tombs, Worth, Baxter, and Park Streets came
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Annals of St. Michael's
together, making five corners or points of varying sharp- ness, hence the name "Five Points." It was an unwhole- some district, supplied with a few rickety buildings, and thickly peopled with human beings of every age, color, and condition.
An old brewery built long before the City hove in sight on its northern route, tottering, with yawning seams in its walls, and broken glass windows, sheltered daring out- laws, and furnished a place of rendezvous for the vilest of the vile. The police were dismayed and discouraged, With the history of the old brewery are associated some of the most appalling crimes ever perpetrated. The ar- rival of every emigrant ship rendered this plague spot hideous. City missionaries joined in the humanizing work to make successful efforts to reclaim this spot.
The convention reports of St. Michael's, St. James's, and St. Mary's during the next few years show a development of the missionary work which Mr. Rich- mond had begun in those parishes. So, under date of 1837, Rev. James Richmond reports to Convention that he conducts five services on Sunday in and around Bloomingdale, on Friday evenings he officiates at Yorkville, and occasionally he preaches at St. Timothy's, the new German church started the preceding year. This latter represented an effort on the part of the Church to meet its responsibilities toward the new im- migration from the north of Europe, which was setting strongly toward this country, and for whose benefit a translation of the prayer-book into German was made at this time. Rev. James Richmond's thorough ac- quaintance with the German language made him natur- ally one of the leaders in any effort to provide services for the German population, and he did not confine his efforts to St. Timothy's only, but preached in German occasionally in St. Michael's also, for Germans
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An Unexplained Resignation
were beginning to appear in considerable numbers in the upper part of the island. On Whitsunday, 1837, he conducted a German service at St. Michael's, of which he reports that "there was a great attendance."
Rev. William Richmond had been assisted at times in conducting his large work, with services at so many and such distant points, by volunteers. A school or seminary under Church influences was established in Bloomingdale in 1819, the head teacher in which was a clergyman, Rev. William Powell, from 1819 to 1821, and the Rev. Augustus Fitch from 1821 to 1835. These men gave their services, apparently gratuitously, Mr. Fitch at one time becoming, for a brief period, rector of St. Ann's Church, Fort Washington. Rev. James Richmond was able to call to his support even more volunteer assistants of this description. Shortly after the ordination of Bishop Onderdonk, in 1831, the Protestant Episcopal Public School Society had been established and an elementary school founded, of which Rev. J. B. Van Ingen was superintendent. In 1837 this association founded Trinity School, the first principal of which was Rev. William Morris. He became at the same time an assistant at St. Michael's Church. Through his assistance Mr. Richmond was able to extend his work, and in that year he re- ports six services held on each Sunday, including the service at the Bloomingdale Asylum; he is further about to undertake additional work at Yorkville, and St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, is to be opened in the morning as well as in the evening. In the follow- ing year the Rev. Caleb Clapp, a teacher in a female seminary in Astoria, L. I., is added to the staff which is assisting Mr. Richmond in his missionary work. A year later the Rev. James Sunderland, also a teacher
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somewhere in New York, is added to this missionary staff, and the rector of St. Michael's, St. James's, and St. Mary's, with this staff of assistants drawn from schools, giving their services, apparently, without charge, is conducting an active and aggressive mission- ary work in the entire upper portion of the island, ex- cluding Harlem, which was a parish by itself.
There is reason to believe that, in spite of his mission- ary enthusiasm, which commended him strongly to the poorer classes, Rev. James Cook Richmond was not altogether so acceptable to the well-to-do and re- spectable pewholders of St. Michael's and St. James's. He was essentially a preaching friar, and soon became restive under parochial restraints. In October of 1841 he made application for a leave of absence, which was granted, with the understanding that failure to return by Easter of 1842 should in itself constitute his resignation. At the same time Rev. William Richmond was appointed assistant of St. Michael's and St. James's, to take charge of those churches during his brother's absence, and with right of succession to the rectorship in case of the latter's failure to return. Rev. James Richmond did in fact return to the country before the time named, but neither came to Blooming- dale nor resumed his parochial duties at St. Michael's and St. James's. No reason was ever assigned. Ap- parently not wishing to resume the charge and feeling that the vestries of those churches did not wish him to do so, he accepted this as an opportunity of sever- ing his parochial relations. After waiting until June, the Vestry of St. Michael's declared him to be no longer rector, by virtue of the arrangement above mentioned. St. James's, in answer to a letter addressed to him by its vestry, received a formal resignation.
CHAPTER IV
The Second Rectorship of Rev. William Richmond, 1842-1858, with some Account of the strange Wilderness which became Central Park.
O N the resignation of the Rev. James Richmond, his brother, Rev. William Richmond, was again called to be rector of the twin churches of St. Michael and St. James. He was already rector of Zion Church, and did not wish to give up that cure and the missionary work which he had begun in connection with it. It would be impossible to take charge of St. Michael's and St. James's in addition to Zion, but he felt that he could, with the help of an assistant, take charge of one of those churches and still retain his city cure. Accordingly, while resuming the rectorship of St. Michael's, he resigned that of St. James's Church on June 13, 1842. At the same time Dr. A. V. Williams, who had become a member of St. James's vestry and clerk of the same in 1831, apparently for the purpose of assisting Mr. Richmond in his mission- ary and educational work in Yorkville, resigned from the vestry of that parish. Rev. John C. Dowdney was appointed rector of St. James's, and to him Mr. Rich- mond turned over also the church which he had organ- ized in Yorkville and in general all his missionary and educational work in that region; and here the con-
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Annals of St. Michael's
nection, so long maintained between St. Michael's and St. James's came to an end, except that for a brief period Mr. Dowdney assisted Mr. Richmond at St. Michael's and St. Mary's.
For three years Mr. Richmond maintained his double position as rector of Zion and St. Michael's, residing during the summer in Bloomingdale and during the winter living at a boarding-house in the city-first on the Battery and then in Greenwich Street where boarding-houses were beginning to occupy the fashion- able residences as their former occupants moved north- ward. But this arrangement did not prove satisfactory. Zion Church felt that it was entitled to and required the entire services of a rector; and Mr. Richmond, on his side, felt that the experiment which he had made in Zion Church was not successful. He had not been able to convert the vestry to his free church ideas; the old pewholding population had moved away; and the missionary work which had been so successful in the first years of his rectorship was dwindling for lack of supporters. Finally, in 1845, he resigned the rector- ship of Zion Church, confining himself for a time to the growing work at St. Michael's, with St. Mary's, Manhattanville.
This was a period of considerable change and de- velopment in the church and city. The diocese had grown so rapidly that, in 1838, the western part of the state, consisting of the present dioceses of Central and Western New York, was set apart to form a new diocese. At the same time the bishopric of New York itself was placed upon a more secure and dignified foundation than heretofore, a fund being created for its support, so that the bishop might give his whole time to his Episcopal work, and not be obliged to act
FREDERICK DEPEYSTER, JR., 1825-1839
DR. A. V. WILLIAMS, 1841-1862
TWO CLERKS OF THE VESTRY
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The Aqueduct
at the same time as Rector of Trinity Church, like Bishops Provoost, Moore, and Hobart, or professor in the General Theological Seminary, like Bishop Onderdonk.
The city was growing rapidly and new churches were coming into existence almost every year. At the same time the population was moving northward. In 1843 Grace Church purchased its present site, on 10th Street and Broadway; and within the next few years most of the older churches, deserted by their former con- stituency, had sold their down-town land and buildings and moved farther up, some of them to their present sites, others to an intermediate location. Blooming- dale felt the effects of the change of conditions and shifting of population during this period to a remarkable degree. At the outset of Mr. Richmond's second rectorship it was still the old Bloomingdale of country homes. By the end of that period the summer popu- lation had almost entirely disappeared, and a poorer, if more numerous, class of residents was beginning to take its place.
In 1836 the New York Orphan Asylum, formerly located on Greenwich Street, moved into its new build- ing at 73d St. and the North River. In 1843 the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, on the present site of the Cathedral, was completed. During the intervening period Bloomingdale was torn up by the construction of the Croton aqueduct. Commenced in 1837, this was completed in 1842, with its two reservoirs at Murray Hill, on 42d Street, then "a short drive from the city," and York Hill, now in Central Park. The line of the aqueduct cut through several of the old country places, and may be said to have been the first disturbance of Bloomingdale by the march of public improvement.
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Annals of St. Michael's
Carried underground through the Manhattanville valley, and up the hill to the south, along the line of what is now Amsterdam Avenue to about 113th Street, it there became a causeway, elevated above the ground. This began to bend eastward at about 108th Street, and became, as it crossed the valley below 104th Street, a monumental structure, resembling the old Roman aqueducts, higher than the tops of the highest houses and pierced, toward the centre of the valley, with arched passage-ways for roads. Below the 92d Street hill it again became a causeway, and finally disappeared beneath the surface at about 84th Street. It constituted at most parts of its course an impassable barrier, traversed only at rare intervals by roads, which surmounted it by means of steep hills or were carried underneath by archways, or by foot-paths which ascended the sides by steps. It was built as though for eternity, few realizing that in the comparatively near future the neighborhood would be so built up as to require more frequent means of communication and that the aqueduct, constructed in so monumental a manner, would prove an actual obstruction to progress.
The construction of the aqueduct led to the official opening of certain streets and avenues, including Tenth Avenue. At first it was supposed that this avenue was actually to be opened as a street throughout its entire length, and in the Vestry minutes of May 3, 1838, there is notice of the appointment of a com- mittee for the purchase of a site to which the church, then on the line of the avenue, might be removed. In point of fact, as already stated, the aqueduct, southward of 108th Street, was carried obliquely "through the block," and consequently Tenth Avenue was not opened below that point until after 1870.
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