USA > New York > New York City > History of New York City : embracing an outline sketch of events from 1609 to 1830, and a full account of its development from 1830 to 1884 Volume II > Part 15
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A Welsh Baptist Church was organized in 1807, consisting chiefly of Welsh people. It lived about six years, when it was dissolved. An- other Welsh Church was founded in 1833. In 1844 they erected a small brick meeting-house in Christopher Street, where they were wor- shipping at the close of the second decade.
In 1841 the Rev. Job Plant, a Baptist from England, established a Particular Baptist Society in the city. He left it with a membership of less than forty members in 1844, when it was dissolved. A few of the members continued to hold prayer-meetings, and in the summer of 1845 four persons covenanted together as a church, calling it the Chris- tian Baptist Church.
So early as 1809 a colony of colored members of the First Baptist Church in Gold Street formed a separate congregation called the Abyssinian Church, They finally procured a place of worship in Anthony Street, and in 1824 they had a stated pastor. The church passed through many trials because of pecuniary embarrassments, their house of worship once having been sold at auction. They now (1883) have a meeting-house in Waverley Place.
At the close of the second decade, fifteen Baptist churches once formed had become extinct. In 1883 there were thirty-eight Baptist churches in the city, many of them elegant structures. The finest of these edifices is Calvary Church, lately completed, on Fifty-seventh Street near Sixth Avenue, of which Rev. Dr. Mac Arthur is pastor. The Fifth Avenue Church, Rev. Thomas Armitage, " pastor, and Madison Avenue and Park Avenue churches, are beautiful temples of worship.
* Thomas Armitage, D.D., was born in England in 1819, and emme to America before he was nineteen years of age. He is of the family of Sir John Armitage, who was ere-
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MORAVIAN CHURCH.
In 1736 Bishops Spangenberg and Nitschman, of the Moravian Church, landed at New York while on their way to their co-religionists in Pennsylvania. They made the acquaintance of John Noble, a wealthy merchant and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in Wall Street. He became a convert to the Moravian faith, and at his house, while the bishops tarried, meetings were held for social worship. His house became a rallying-place for other Moravian missionaries who came from Germany, including Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the modern Moravian Church in Germany, and who arrived at New York with a considerable body of Moravians in 1741.
Late in 1748 Bishop Wattivel came to New York from Germany, and while he tarried there he effected the first organization of a Mora- vian church in that city, and administered the Lord's Supper. The number of the congregation was nearly one hundred. For two years
ated a baronet by Charles I. in 1640. His mother was a pious Methodist, who died when this her eldest son was six years old. It was her earnest prayer that he should be converted in his youth and " become a good minister of Christ." Her prayer was answered. Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " and some sermons which he read made a deep impression on his mind, and at twelve years of age he was converted. At fifteen he wasauthorized to exhort at Methodist meetings. Before he was sixteen he was licensed by the confer- ence a local preacher, and he entered upon the ministry with great success, displaying at that early age the fluency of speech and peculiar eloquence and persuasive powers which have distinguished him in later life. His first sermon was remarkable in many respects, and was the instrument of several conversions.
After laboring as a local preacher until he was almost nineteen years old, he came to America, and was stationed, first in Suffolk County, L. I., then at Watervliet, a few miles from Albany, and finally in Albany. In all of these places he inaugurated fruitful revivals. Impressed with the method of baptism used by the Baptists, his mind became much exercised by the question, What is true baptism? Satisfied that immersion was the method prescribed by Scripture, after a long struggle with his convictions he yielded. and withdrawing from the Methodist Church, he was immersed by the Rev. Dr. Welch. of Albany, and was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of twenty-nine years. He was called to the Norfolk Street Church, in New York City, where he labored with great zeal and success. The congregation removed to Forty-sixth Street, near Fifth Avenue, in lado, and assumed the name of the Fifth Avenue Church. There he has ministered ever since. The degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by Madison University, and that of D. D. by Georgetown College, Kentucky, when he was thirty-four years of age.
In 1856 Dr. Armitage was chosen president of the American Bible Union of the Bap- tist Church. In all religions and benevolent works in which he is engaged, he labors . with untiring zeal. energy, and efficiency. A late writer said of Dr. Armitage : " Endowed with the greater gifts of eloquence, a man of extensive learning and soul culture, he justly holds a front place among the earnest expounders of the truth, and in the ranks of upright and popular men."
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they met for worship in the house of Mr. Noble. In 1751 the Moravian congregation built a modest house of worship in Fair (now Fulton) Street, between William and Dutch streets. It was dedicated by Bishop Spangenberg in the summer of 1752. In that house they worshipped nearly eighty years. It was rebuilt of brick in 1829. The congregation sold the property after Fulton Street was widened, in 1843, and eight feet of their building had been cut off by the operation. They erected a new and substantial house of worship on the corner of Mott and Houston streets in 1845. The number of communicants in 1849 was about one hundred and thirty.
METHODIST CHURCH.
The first Methodist Church in America was founded in the city of New York in 1766. In that year a few Irish families who were Methodists arrived in this city, among whom was Philip Embury, a well-to-do local preacher, who made his residence in Augusta Street, afterward known as City Hall Place. He gathered his countrymen at his house for social worship, and preached to them there. After a while a room was hired adjoining the soldiers' barracks at Chambers Street, and a church was organized, of which Mr. Embury was the minister.
Very soon this seed of the great Methodist Church in America was watered by the ministration of Captain Thomas Webb, barrack-master at Albany, who preached to the little congregation in his regimentals. This was a novelty which drew a multitude of people to the meeting. and many who
,came to scoff remained to pray."
The congregation rapidly increased, and the rigging-loft where the Baptists had held their meetings was hired and fitted up for public worship. It was a high-roofed, one-story building, the gable at the street, in the fashion of the old Dutch houses. This building was on the east side of William Street, about half way between Fulton and John streets. The congregation worshipped there about two years, when a church edifice was completed on a lot purchased on the south side of John Street, cast of Nassau Street. It was 60 feet in length and 42 in breadth, and was called Wesley Chapel. It is more famil- iarly known as the JJohn Street Church. The first sermon preached in it was delivered by Mr. Embury on October 30, 1768.
The following year Messrs. Boardman and Pillmore came from Eng- land and labored for the Methodist Church in New York, and founded
SECOND DECADE, 1840-1850.
one in Philadelphia. Mr. Pillmore became the first rector of Christ (Episcopal) Church, in Ann Street, in 1794.
The John Street Church was the mother of over fifty Methodist churches in New York in 1883. The first edifice was taken down in Isit, and another was erected on the spot. John Street was widenil in 1840, when the church was again taken down and another was built in its place, spacious enough to accommodate a large congregation. In 1849 the communicants of that church numbered over four hundred.
The Second Methodist congregation formed in New York City was the Forsyth Street Church, in 1790. They first built a small edifice of wood, near Division Street. This was taken down in 1833, and a sub- stantial brick building was erected on its site. This church seemed always to be in a flourishing state. Before the close of the second decade two churches had colonized from it.
The third Methodist Church in the city was founded in 1797. They built a house of worship in Duane Street, near Hudson Street, and were always a flourishing congregation. In 1847 nearly six hundred and fifty communicants were on its list of membership.
At a very early period the Methodists began to plant the seeds of church organizations among the scattered population on the island. Near the close of the last century Philip I. Arcularius and John Spruson, earnest members of the John Street Church, established a weekly prayer-meeting in the north-easterly part of the city, on the road leading to Harlem, now the Bowery and Third Avenue. It was near the two-mile stone, and to designate this station from others it was called the Two-Mile Stone Prayer-Meeting. It was continued several years. and quite a large number of the inhabitants became attached to the Methodists. A class was formed, preaching was obtained occasionally, and about the year 1800 a church was organized -the fourth in the city of the Methodist denomination.
For some years this society was known as the Two-Mile Stone Church, but after 1830 it was the Seventh Street Church. The con- gregation first occupied as a place of worship an old building in Nicholas- William (near St. Mark's) Place, which was hired on a long lease. In 1830, before the lease expired, the owner, wishing to use the land, gave them a longer lease of a lot on Seventh Street. To that It the old building was transferred. Again the owner wanted the land. and he gave the church a lot in fee on the other side of Seventh Street, where they built a substantial brick edifice in 1836. The old building was removed to Yorkville, where, after two migrations, it served a Methodist congregation as a place of worship for several years.
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A Methodist church was built in Allen Street in 1810-a substantial stone building, which was replaced by a more spacious brick edifice. From the beginning this congregation flourished exceedingly. In the same year (1810) a Methodist church was organized on the westerly side of the city, among the scattered population there. At first they worshipped in a private house. At length they erected a small wooden building on the corner of (present) Bedford and Morton streets. The congregation increased rapidly. Twice they enlarged their place of worship, and in 1840 they erected a large and substantial brick edifice on the site. The church was then, and for years afterward, overflow- ing with communicants.
In 1829 a Methodist church was organized in the sparsely populated district along the Hudson River above Greenwich, in the vicinity of Eighteenth Street. Other churches rapidly sprang up in other portions of the city, and at the close of the second decade there were 40 Methodist church organizations, with 31 houses of worship, and an aggregate of over 13,000 members of various nationalities. There were eight churches composed of white and colored persons, and seven composed exclusively of colored persons.
The history of the organization of colored Methodist churches in New York may be briefly told. Late in 1787 the colored Methodists in Philadelphia, considering the disabilities they were subjected to in connection with their white brethren, determined to form a separate and distinct ecclesiastical organization. In 1793 Richard Allen, a colored preacher, built for his race a house of worship on his own grounds, and it was consecrated by Bishop Asbury, with the title of the Bethel Church. The white Methodists claimed both the house and the congregation. The colored people resisted, and a long and bitter controversy ensued. At length a general convention of colored Methodists assembled in Philadelphia in 1816, and formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They elected the Rev. Richard Allen bishop, and he was regularly consecrated.
Within this ecclesiastical organization there soon appeared four dis- tinct and separate church organizations -- namely, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the African Methodist Union. In their doctrines, discipline, and practices these four bodies were substantially alike.
A Methodist Episcopal Zion congregation was the first colored Methodist church founded in the city of New York. It was organized about the year 1500. The same year a house of worship was built for
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it on the corner of Church and Leonard streets. A branch of this church was afterward established at Harlem.
In the year 1813 an Asbury African Methodist Episcopal church was founded. It could not stand alone, and in 1820 it was connected with the Zion Church. In 1826 a Methodist African Union church was organized as an independent body of seven persons. They con- tinued their meetings with increasing numbers until 1835, when the building where they met, on Seventh Avenue near Eighteenth Street. was burned. In 1840 they erected a brick building on Fifteenth Street, near Sixth Avenue, where they still worshipped at the close of this decade.
The Methodist Harlem Mission was begun in 1830. It was a circuit established by the denomination. There were six principal stations -- namely, Harlem, Yorkville, Manhattanville, Fort Washington, Forty- first Street on the Hudson River, and Twenty-seventh Street toward the East River. Out of this missionary effort grew several flourish- ing Methodist churches.
There was a German Methodist Mission church established in 1841. and a German Evangelical Methodist church was gathered the same year in the city of New York. The former had their place of worship in Second Street, the latter in Sixteenth Street, near Sixth Avenue. In each the services were conducted in the German language. There was also a Welsh Methodist church organized in New York about 1828.
A Mariners' Methodist Episcopal church was founded in 1844, and a house of worship was erected in Cherry Street, near Rutgers Place. The next year a Floating Bethel was established at the foot of Rector Street by the Methodists. These were the immediate fruits of the Asbury Society, which had been established for the special purpose of increasing the number of Methodist churches in the city of New York.
Methodism, as established in the city of New York in the last century, has undergone modifications. In 1820 members of that denomination in this city, dissatisfied with what they conceived to be an assumption of power by the bishops and the conference, and prefer- ring a congregational form of government, organized what they termed the Methodist Society, for effecting a reform. They opened a place of worship in Chrystie Street. There were continual accessions to their numbers. In May, 1826, a division took place, some preferring the entire independence of each church and a permanent ministry, and others preferring a connection of churches and an itinerant ministry.
This society was followed by the establishment, about 1-30, of a
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Methodist Protestant Church, which protested against the authority of the conference and the jurisdiction of the bishops. At about the same time a small congregation of Primitive Methodists was formed in New York, who desired to bring the Church back to its primitive simplicity. In 1883 there were fifty-five Methodist churches in the city.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHI.
So powerful and implacable were the religious prejudices existing between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants at the period of the European emigration to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that these antagonistic religionists could not harmonize in the business of building up a new empire in the virgin hemisphere. The Protestants, having occupied the field north of the Carolinas earlier and in far greater numbers than the Roman Catholics, compara- tively few of the latter were in the English-American colonies at the time of the old war for independence, excepting in Maryland, because they were everywhere subjected to disabilities if not absolute persecu- tion.
The first settlement of Roman Catholic families in the city of New York was during the administration of Governor Dongan, late in the seventeenth century. Dongan was a Roman Catholic, and a generous and enlightened man. His successors under royal rule were Prot- estants, and the Roman Catholics were frequently subjected to the operations of very oppressive laws. There was even a law, at one time, on the New York statute-books providing for the hanging of any Roman Catholic priest who should voluntarily come into the province, but it was never enforced.
Until the establishment of the political independence of the United States no Roman Catholic priest was allowed to perform the functions of his sacred office publicly in the city of New York ; but immediately after the evacuation of that city by the British troops, in November, 1783, a congregation was formed under the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Farmer, who came from Philadelphia occasionally for the comfort of the people. They worshipped in a building in Vauxhall Garden, which was on the margin of the Hudson River, extending from Warren to Chambers Street. Tradition says mass had been celebrated so early as 1781-82 in a loft over a carpenter's shop in Barclay Street, then in the suburbs of the city. The first regularly settled priest in New York was the Rev. Charles Whelan. He was unpopular, and was soon suc- ceeded by the Rev. Andrew Nugent.
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The first Roman Catholic church on Manhattan Island was incor- porated June 11, 1785, by the name of the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church in the City of New York. They applied for the use of the court-room in the Exchange, situated at the lower part of Broad Street, as a place for public worship, but failed to secure it, when steps were immediately taken to erect a church edifice. Lots were bought on the corner of Church and Barclay streets, and on them a brick building was erected, 48 by SI feet in size. It was completed late in 1786. The first mass in it was performed by the Rev. Mr. Nugent on November 4th, assisted by the chaplain of the Spanish minister and the Rev. Jose Phelan. In the following spring the name was changed to St. Peter's Church. Charles III., King of Spain, was a munificent contributor to the fund for the erection of this church.
Mr. Nugent left the charge in 1738, and was succeeded by the Rev. W. O'Brien, who filled the position until his death, in 1816. He established a free school in the year 1800. Mrs. Elizabeth A. Seton, afterward the founder of the Sisters of Charity in the United States, was received into St. Peter's Church, and took her first communion there in March, 1805. St. Peter's Church was rebuilt of granite, and was consecrated by Bishop Hughes in February, 1838.
For more than thirty years St. Peter's was the only Roman Catholic Church in the city of New York. The denomination in- creased rapidly, and the want of another place of public worship becoming a necessity, a very spacious stone building was erected on the corner of Mott and Prince streets in 1815, and called St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was 120 feet in length and 80 feet in width, but not many years passed before the increasing number of the congrega- tion compelled an enlargement of the building, extending it through the block from Mott Street to Mulberry Street. It afforded sitting room for two thousand persons. This cathedral became the seat of the Roman Catholic Episcopate in New York. The Cathedral was then on the outskirts of the city.
Ten years after the Cathedral was built another church edifice was demanded by the increase of the Roman Catholic population, and toward the close of 1826 a building in Sheriff Street, between Broome and Delancey, was bought of Presbyterians who had worshipped there. In that small frame building the Church of St. Mary wor- shipped for six years, when it was destroyed by fire A large and convenient edifice was immediately built in Grand Street, corner of Ridge Street. It was opened in 1533, and dedicated as the Church of St. Mary.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
The Roman Catholics bought of the Episcopalians, as we have observed, Christ Church, in Ann Street, and adopted that name for the church they established there. When it was burned, in 1834, two churches were established, as the congregation had become numerous. A part of the congregation erected a large edifice in James Street, near Chatham Street, and named it St. James's Church, while the re- mainder of the Ann Street congregation erected a house of worship in Chambers Street, near Centre Street, and called it the Church of the Transfiguration.
The Roman Catholic population increasing rapidly in the north- western part of the city, it became necessary to provide for their spiritual wants. St. Joseph's Church was erected on Sixth Avenue. corner of Barrow Street, and opened in 1833.
During the first and second decades there was a large German immigration to New York City. The immigrants were mostly Roman Catholics, and between 1835 and 1850 no less than four churches were erected for them. Another was built for French Roman Catholics in 1843, on the site of the Church of the Ascension, in Canal Street.
A large Roman Catholic population had settled at Harlem, and a church was built for them there in 1835. St. Andrew's Church was established in an abandoned Universalist Church in Duane Street, near Chatham, in 1840. and within five years afterward four other Roman Catholic churches were established. Among these was the church of St. Vincent de Paul, consisting of French people chiefly.
The history of the marvellous growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the city of New York during the half century ending in 1850 is exceedingly interesting and important in several aspects. That rapid growth was owing chiefly to the steady flow of the tide of immigration from Europe, especially from Ireland, after 1830.
The comparatively rapid increase of the Church in New York from the beginning of the century demanded an authoritative ecclesiastical force at that point for its better government. Until 1SOS the Church in New York formed part of the Diocese of Baltimore, the only one in the United States. In that year Pope Pius VII. erected Baltimore into an archiepiscopal see, with Bishop Carroll at its head, and divided the rest of the diocese into four sees, of which one comprised the Stato of New York and a part of New Jersey. Over the latter the Rev. Luke Concanen, of the Order of St. Dominic, was appointed the first bishop. He was consecrated at Rome, on April 24, 1808, but died at Naples before he embarked for New York. No other bishop was ap- pointed until 1>14. after the Pope returned to Rome from exile. The
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diocese remained until that time under the spiritual guidance of vicars.
Meanwhile an important question had been settled. A citizen had been robbed of goods, and he had a man and his wife arrested on a charge of being the thieves. Very soon afterward the goods were restored to him through the instrumentality of the confessional, exer- cised by the Rev. Anthony Kohlman, a Roman Catholic priest then officiating in New York. The latter was cited before a justice of the peace to testify as to the name of the real thief. He refused to do so. pleading that his church strictly forbade him to make such revelations concerning matters at the confessional, which were known only to himself and the penitent. The case was sent to the grand jury, be- fore whom the priest made the same plea in support of his refusal to testify, and begged to be excused.
The trial was held in June, 1813, before a court composed of De Witt Clinton, mayor of the city of New York ; Josiah Ogden Hoffman, recorder, and two sitting aldermen. The Rev. Mr. Kohlman held firmly to his position when called upon to testify. Richard Riker and Counsellor Sampson had volunteered their services in behalf of the priest. Mr. Riker argued the case with great ability, and showed that, under the Constitution of the State of New York, which allowed the fullest toleration, every principle of any religious denomination was fully protected which did not "lead to licentiousness, or to practises inconsistent with the peace and safety of the State." Counsellor Sampson made an eloquent plea on the same broad premises. Mayor Clinton gave his decision in the case in favor of the priest.
The principle of this decision was afterward embodied in a statuto " of the State of New York (1828), which declared that " No min- ister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall be allowed to disclose any confession made to him in his professional character, in the course of discipline enjoined by the rules or practice of such denomination."
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