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 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34
83
Hudson River Railroad
In point of fact it did not prove necessary to remove the church, but damages for the opening, amounting to about $4000, were awarded to St. Michael's Church at that time, in the form of water stock, and proved a. very welcome addition to its property.
The movement of the city northward was greatly accelerated by the invention of horse cars. The first horse car company in the world, the New York and Harlem, was incorporated in 1830, and the first cars were run on that road as far as Murray Hill in 1832. This was followed in rapid succession by other horse car lines, none of which, in point of fact, reached Bloom- ingdale, but some of which made the lower part of that region more accessible to the city. One result of this increased accessibility was the laying out of a new settlement on the old Harsen farm at Blooming- dale Road and 7Ist Street. A guide book, published in 18461, describes Bloomingdale as:
A remarkably neat village of New York County, situ- ated on the left bank of the Hudson, five miles above the City Hall. An orphan asylum is established here. The village consists chiefly of country seats and contains some 400 inhabitants.
The village here described as Bloomingdale was this settlement, commonly called Harsenville. Manhat- tanville is described in the same volume as having 500 inhabitants and "Harlaem" 1500.
But most important in its effects on the future of Bloomingdale was the construction of the Hudson River Railroad. This was incorporated in 1846, and in 1849 permission was granted to run the locomotives to 30th Street, which was on the outskirts of the city of
1 A Picture of New York.
84
Annals of St. Michael's
that day,1 and dummies below this to Chambers Street. The road was finally completed in 1851. It destroyed in large part the beauty of the country residences along the Hudson River and drove the occupants of those old homes to other regions. At the same time this, and the other railroads constructed at about the same time, with the telegraph,2 made other regions, farther away in miles, more accessible to the city than Bloomingdale had ever been. The completion of the Hudson River Railroad may be said to mark the final stage in the change of character of Bloomingdale, which now ceased to be an aristocratic suburb of the city. This change Mr. Richmond refers to in his Convention reports, and it also makes itself felt in the Vestry lists.
The Vestry records of this period contain little of interest, but show a steady increase in the receipts and expenses of the parish. In 1845 the rector's salary was increased to $1400. After that it was added to every few years, until 1853, when it reached the sum of $2500; at which figure it remained stationary for a long time. In 1846 the belfry is in danger of falling down, and repairs are made at an expense of something over $300. From the treasurer's report of that year it appears that the income of the church amounted to $1848.77, of which $1362.50 was derived from ground rents on the land endowment, $193.52 from interest on water stock, $232.75 from pew-rents, and $60 from burials. Among the expenses are recorded several bills for fuel, amounting in all to $26. The fuel still
1 When the Church of the Transfiguration was built on 29th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues, in 1849, "the view was unbroken to Madison Square below, and to Murray Hill above."
2 The first telegraph line out of New York, connecting that city with Philadelphia, was opened in 1847.
85
Ritualistic Movement
consisted of wood, and the church was heated by a stove; but the next year, 1847, a furnace was built at an expense of $611.03. In 1846 there is an increase of the appropriation for the choir of $50, "for the purpose of obtaining an additional female voice." In 1849 $100 is appropriated for the same purpose, and Miss Pease is mentioned by name as the singer. By 1853 $250 is the regular salary of the organist. By the same date the salary of the sexton has risen to $175.
Those were days when much needed improvements in the conduct of church services were beginning to be introduced. Heretofore there had been great theo- retical zeal for Prayer Book services and the usages of the Church as distinguished from the sects. Clergy- men who held services in all sorts of places and who used prayers not contained in the Prayer Book, or who adapted the Prayer Book services to special needs, were looked on with suspicion by the ordinary con- servative Churchman. But with the stiffness and conservatism of that day went what would seem to us great slovenliness and positive irreverence in the ar- rangement and treatment of their church buildings and the conduct of their services. Now, largely as a result of the Oxford movement, the services of the Church begin to be conducted in a more orderly and decent manner, and the church buildings to be beauti- fied and treated with greater reverence. Even the costume of the clergy underwent a change. Heretofore clergymen had been distinguished in their dress, when not performing clerical functions, principally, if at all, by a voluminous white neck-tie. In going to and from church and in visitation of the sick, they wore cassock and gown, with bands and scarf, and a pair of white silk gloves. Now they begin to assert their
86
Annals of St. Michael's
clerical separateness by wearing out of church special clothes of a different cut from those worn by the ordinary citizen, while in church their robes become more ecclesiastical and more antique. The peculiar scarfs, given at funerals and worn afterwards by the clergyman in church, and the white gloves, with the first finger slit so as to enable the wearer to turn the pages of the Prayer Book and Bible, were dropped. Something of this movement toward ritual adornment and improvement one sees in the Convention addresses of Bishop Onderdonk. So, in 1836, he mentions, in connection with the consecration of two new churches at Medina and Geddes, the fact that they are the only churches in the diocese having crosses. In 1839 he notes with approval the institution of daily Morning and Evening Prayer in the churches at Astoria and Troy. The fact of his mention of these matters in such a manner shows the important place which they oc- cupied in the minds of the Churchmen of that period. They were matters of excited controversy. Party spirit ran high, and New York, as represented by its Bishop, was on the Ritualistic side.
The students of the General Theological Seminary were strongly affected by this High Church movement. The influences of the school were in general High Church, and it came to be looked on with grave distrust in other parts of the country. The Carey incident, in 1843, aroused the general excitement to a high pitch. Mr. Carey graduated from the General Theological Seminary în 1842, and served as lay-reader in St. Peter's Church. "The rector of that church, Dr. Smith, alarmed at Mr. Carey's acceptance of some of the Oxford doctrines, refused to sign his testimonials and joined with Dr. Anthon, rector of St. Mark's Church, in a protest to the
.
87
The Carey Incident
Bishop against his ordination. After an examination of Mr. Carey, in which he was assisted by six Presbyters, including Drs. Smith and Anthon, the Bishop, finding nothing amiss in his views, decided to ordain him. The ordination was held in St. Stephen's Church, Sunday, July 2, 1843. When the Bishop asked the rubrical question : "If there be any of you who knoweth any impediment or notable crime," etc., Dr. Smith and Dr. Anthon arose and read a solemn protest against Mr. Carey's ordination, because he "holds things contrary to the doctrine of the Protestant Episcopal Church in these United States and in close alliance with the errors of the Church of Rome."
Two years later, in 1845, Bishop Onderdonk was tried on a charge of immorality by a court of his peers, found guilty, and suspended. So strong was party feeling at the time, that many believed his prosecution and conviction on such charges to be a case of persecu- tion; and that his judges, being Low Churchmen, were prejudiced against him because of his High Church views. This feeling was especially strong in his own diocese, where he had rendered notable service in rousing the Church to its obligation to care for the poor and needy. Owing largely to this division of feeling, New York remained from 1845 to 1852 without a Bishop, to the great prejudice of the Church. Church work everywhere was hampered or checked altogether. The register of St. Michael's parish reflects clearly the distressful conditions of this period. From 1845 to 1852 only one confirmation is reported, namely, in 1850, and no report of communicants is made during that time. Bishop Onderdonk's condemnation was coincident with Mr. Richmond's resignation of Zion
88
Annals of St. Michael's
and seems to have had, also, some connection with that event.
It was during this period of embittered party strife, of disorganization and lack of leadership, that, in 1847, the City Mission Society, which Bishop Onder- donk had been instrumental in founding, passed out of existence. The reasons for this are set forth in the report of the Society to the Convention of that year, as follows:
During the past year important changes have taken place in the form of missionary action among the city churches, leading to a suspension, at least, of the duties hitherto performed by this Society as their agent. The care of providing for the destitute within their own bounds has been, of late, assumed by the Parish churches them- selves; and their usual Missionary contributions, upon which the operations of the Society were altogether dependent, retained, consequently, for their own expenditure. Under this decision of the Churches, the Society was obviously left without means to carry on their operations; and had, consequently, no other choice left them than to bring them to a close, and to dispose of their Mission Churches in the mode most advantageous to the great cause in which for 15 years, they had faithfully labored. This they did, by transferring to the congregations worshipping there- in, their Church buildings respectively, for the balance of debt resting on them, securing as far as lay in their power, the condition of their being held forever as Free Churches.
In point of fact, two of the churches founded by the City Mission Society continued to exist as free churches. The third, St. Matthew's, passed out of existence. Trin- ity had withdrawn the annual appropriation to the City Mission Society, which it had made since 1831, varying in amount from $600 to $1800, and it refused
,
89
Abandonment of City Missions
to save St. Matthew's from perishing. The whole matter aroused much feeling against Trinity corpora- tion among New York Churches and Churchmen, and led to the first attack upon it in the Legislature, as related elsewhere. But the work of the City Mission Society had not been in vain. It had aroused the Church in some degree to a sense of its obligations toward the less favored classes of the population. Some of the larger city parishes had established or were establishing free chapels of their own; and Dr. Muhlenberg was building the free church of the Holy Communion and commencing the great work connected with his name and with that parish.
During the years from 1845 to 1847 there is no record of any special work undertaken by Mr. Richmond out- side of the parishes of St. Michael's and St. Mary's, with the Bloomingdale Asylum. This does not mean that he was idle. It was his habit to conduct services and preach four times, and sometimes five times a Sunday and conduct Sunday School besides. He was also an active and an interested member of the General Board of Missions, and on the minutes of the missionary committee of the diocese there is entered a "note of thanks for his activity and success in removing a large debt which threatened seriously to interfere with the continuance of some of its institutions." 1
Since the autumn of 1841, with an intermission from 1843 to 1845, Mr. Thomas McClure Peters, a student in the seminary, had worked under Mr. Richmond as a lay reader, chiefly, if not altogether, at St. Mary's, Manhattanville. In 1847 he was ordained deacon, married Mr. Richmond's daughter, and became his assistant, technically at St. Mary's Church, but in 1 Sermon of Rev. C. B. Smith.
90
Annals of St. Michael's
reality in the whole work of the parish. He had felt the influence of the ecclesiastical, High Church, Oxford movement on the one side and of the missionary, humanitarian, and progressive movements, represented ! by such men as Mr. Richmond and Dr. Muhlenberg,, on the other side. The historic Church, daily services, frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, beauty and order in the services of the Church, appealed to him; and he was at the same time eager to carry the Gospel to the poor, an ardent believer in free churches, full of faith in humanity, and imbued with the spirit of the age. The City Mission Society had been planned and organized to carry the Church to what we may call the lower middle classes. In the very year in which it passed out of existence, 1847, Mr. Peters and Mr. Richmond began to hold services in the city institutions and to visit the sick and needy in the hospitals and alms- houses. This was the commencement of the Mission to Public Institutions, which was somewhat more defin- itely organized in 1849, intended to reach the poorest and most neglected classes in the city, the strata still underlying those whom the City Mission had sought to serve.
In the same year Mr. Peters started a mission at Seneca village, in what is now Central Park, on the site of the present upper reservoir; and by 1849 had or- ganized All Angels' Church, of which a fuller history will be found elsewhere in this volume. The area now occupied by Central Park was at that time the most forlorn and miserable section of New York City. It is thus described by General Viele in his Memorial History of New York:
It was for the most part a succession of stone quarries,
91
A Refuge of Squatters
interspersed with pestiferous swamps. The entire ground was the refuge of about five thousand squatters, dwelling in rude huts of their own construction, and living off the refuse of the city which they daily conveyed in small carts, chiefly drawn by dogs, from the lower part of the city, through Fifth Avenue (then a dirt road, running over hills and hollows). This refuse they divided among themselves and a hundred thousand domestic animals and fowls, reserving the bones for the bone-boiling establishment situated within the area. Horses, cows, swine, goats, cats, geese and chickens swarmed everywhere, destroying what little verdure they found. Even the roots in the ground were exterminated until the rocks were laid bare, giving an air of utter desolation to the scene, made more repul- sive from the odors of the decaying organic matter which accumulated in the beds of the old water courses that ramified the surface in all directions, broadening out into reeking swamps wherever their channels were intercepted.
The following extracts from a series of articles which Mr. Peters commenced to write at a later period, and of which only fragments remain, give a vivid picture of that region as he found it, its conditions and inhabit- ants, human and animal, at the middle of the last cen- tury, before the park was:
No visitor to those beautiful pleasure grounds sees anything to indicate the condition of things there in the days when no Park was proposed. One would not hesitate even now to say that it must once have been a very rough territory and yet the rocky, swampy wilderness is faintly outlined in the Park as it is. Many a painful travail of thought passed its frequenters of those days when con- templating the feasibility of subduing its wilderness for the erection of lines of city dwellings; and the ruin it must bring to its unhappy owners by assessments for the levelling of rocky minarets and the draining and filling of its morasses.
92
Annals of St. Michael's
It was a happy thought which said it is not fit for any- thing else but we can make of it a magnificent Park and we will.
Population had long ago sent up its rays to the East and West of it and three or four houses of the ancient time stood on the edge of the Park region. East and West had little to do with each other, and consequently the roads connecting them were poor. Seventy-first Street was pass- able for riders or for light wagons, but its bald edges of rock afforded poor foothold for horses dragging heavy carriages. Eighty-sixth was open to the same objection at its Bloom- ingdale Road end. Jauncey's Lane, coming out upon the Bloomingdale Road at about 92d Street, was a very good country road and the only one of the three lines of com- munication much used by carriages. From Jauncey's to Harlem Lane there was no cross road. The old Albany Road, little used, cut off a strip on the 5th Avenue side of the Park from about goth St. up and passed down a steep hill full of loose stones at McGowan's Pass, near the Mount St. Vincent restaurant. As to trees there were plenty of them in the northern part of the present Park, but as they were cut down by any marauder none were allowed to grow to any size. Hence it comes that, while there were many trees older than the Park, the only trees of full age are a few which remained standing in the grounds of the three or four old houses.
Unattractive as the Park region then was, it was by no means unpeopled. From 76th St. to 108th St. there was a population considerable in numbers and of the most heter- ogeneous kind. White and black and Indian, American, German, and Irish; the believers and practicers in monog- amy and those who troubled themselves about no gamy at all; gentle folk deteriorated and rough lovers of a free and easy life; saints the most exalted and sinners the most abandoned, lived and multiplied and died. One large burying ground and three or four smaller ones received
93
"Jake's End "
the remains of the departed. Near the then upper reservoir were two churches, one attended by colored only,1 another, a small Episcopal church, in which white and black and all intermediate shades worshipped harmoniously together.
In another fragment, entitled "Jake's End," he de- scribes the condition of one of the denizens of that general neighborhood :
His house, or at least his last house during life, was wretched enough to pass among the most doleful of the squatters' huts of that region.
It was mostly underground, being entered by a descent of several steps from a door which faced (it would sound too cheerful to say the rising sun, so let it be) the eastern storm. There might have been a sheet or two of dirt, with glass on the outside of it, but to the best of my recol- lections the den was windowless and all the light came through the door, which I certainly never saw closed. The cabin had a mud floor, with a small platform of broken plank on one side. There was an open fireplace with one iron fire-dog; the fuel was of such bits of wood as could be picked up on the banks of the North River, whence it may be said, in passing, not a few of the pre-Parkites drew their supplies for cooking and warmth. In default of other com- bustibles the scanty platform was encroached upon, and as Jake gradually failed the only remnant of flooring faded away with him. A sadly crippled chair offered a treacher- ous seat for a single visitor; any more must remain stand- ing, unless they chose a suspicious resting place on the edge of Jake's bed. This had been long years ago an im- posing timber structure, but was now far advanced in ruin. Jake occupied this ruin when first I made his acquaintance, and there he remained immovable to the end. Wretched
1 This was a Methodist church; the Episcopal church here referred to is All Angels'.
94
Annals of St. Michael's
as was this home Jake was not alone in it, but had a com- panion, Molly, with whom he lived in unblessed and childless union. Molly remained with him to the end, not from the depth of her affection but from entirely material reasons. One was that Jake kept under his pillow a purse of money laid up against a day more rainy than the rest of a stormy life and to leave, if might be, a small burial fund at its close. From this purse when he was asleep and she thirsty, Molly abstracted coins, which Jake missed and whose destination he knew, but how could he help himself ? Besides all this a kind neighbor was in the habit of bringing poor Jake daily a good hot breakfast and at times another meal, which Molly took from the weak and dying man to devour for her own sustenance.
In another fragment he describes the dogs and the gruesome horse hunts conducted by them :
By gift or unauthorized, or for the sake of refuge or wild life almost every existing species of dog had found its way there. Besides which all sorts of canines belong- ing to no known breed, from crossings and quarterings and unhappy mistakes, driven from more respectable quar- ters as too mongrel to be acknowledged, found hospitable shelter in its huts and shanties. Bound by no chain, they were free to rove and maraud by day and come home or stay out as they chose by night. With the perversity com- mon to flesh and blood, they were sure to be around the door step at early morn.
Their life was divided between imperturbable laziness and tremendous excitement. Stretched out at repose under the sunny side of a shanty, nothing but a brick would stir them, and then feebly. Let, however, a distant bark from two contending dogs break the air and they rushed, bundles of nerves, from every quarter, furious and swift, like foemen hastening to their scene of action, and gathering around the strife like boys hemming in a walking match. The
95
The Cholera
contest over, they returned to their former immovable sloth. Every child was the happy owner of a dog, crippled or deformed as it might be. Many an unattached dog booked himself as holding general allegiance to any who for the time being would whistle him home. Making a visit one day to a man poor in dollars and rich in offspring, I counted seven sluggish dogs about his doorstep. "No wonder you are poor," said I, "with all this pack to feed."
"O they don't cost me nothing," drawled the man, "they hunt for a living." Not that they earned their food by tracking the deer or coursing the hare or pointing the woodcock: the hunting was a general marauding for that sustenance which they failed to receive from their owners or patrons. As they had made good progress backward towards a wild life, so had they correspondingly approached to a savage taste. Carrion, even down to decomposing pig, was good food and often easily gotten by unearthing some un- buried animal. The great hunts conducted in packs were directed towards the superannuated horses turned out on the Commons to die. The hovering crows made their repeated dashes at the eyes of the still living victims and cleaned out the sockets as their delicate morsel. The ground, furrowed by the pawings of the agonized horse, gave token of the night struggle with the hungry and pitiless dogs. No complete skeleton even marked the place where an equine life had gone out, but far and wide over wold and heath were scattered whitened bones from which the flesh had been torn and the sinews gnawed.
Such was the dog and such the dog's life before the Park was.
In the same year in which All Angels' Church was organized, 1849, the cholera again visited New York. It started in Five Points on May 14th. The public schools were turned into hospitals, and in them alone 102I persons are reported to have died. The total
96
Annals of St. Michael's
mortality was reported as 5071. Among the victims was Mr. Richmond's wife. With her death the bond which held him to settled parochial work was broken, and, early in 1851, he put himself at the service of the Board of Missions to go to the Pacific coast, and be- came the first missionary of our Church in Oregon. It seems to have been his intention to devote himself permanently to mission work, but at the outset, instead of resigning the cure of St. Michael's, he asked for a leave of absence for one year, he to provide for the continuance of services during his absence at his own expense. Leave of absence was granted March 19, 1851, and Rev. T. M. Peters, then rector of All Angels' and assistant at St. Mary's, was appointed to take his place during his absence.
During Mr. Richmond's absence in Oregon, Mr. Peters established St. Timothy's Church. The origi- nal parish of St. Michael's had been regarded by Mr. Richmond as extending northward to Spuyten Duyvil. To provide for the people in the upper part of this region he had established St. Ann's Church at Fort Washington, where there was then a small settlement of poor people. In course of time these moved away, and about, or shortly after 1836, St. Ann's Church, which owned no building of its own, passed out of exist- ence. By the middle of the next decade a small village, called Carmansville, had sprung up somewhat further south, in the neighborhood of 150th Street. Here, in 1847, a new church, the Church of the Intercession, was established, largely through the agency of members of St. Andrew's Church, Harlem. This took the place of St. Ann's Church in providing for the population of the upper end of the island, and by the creation of this parish the rectors of St. Michael's Church felt
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.