USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 9
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 9
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Talbot and that in the southern counties they were welcomed in the Independents' meeting houses, where they preached and commended the Church to all who heard them".
The efforts of Governor Fletcher to establish the Church of Eng- land on Long Island were apparently ineffective but, nevertheless, led to some action in founding Grace Church, Jamaica, St. James in Newtown and St. George's, Flushing, as well as St. George's, Hemp- stead.
In 1699 there was a united action of the Church of England people in Jamaica who claimed the exclusive use of the stone church building which had been erected by the people in general, but without complete success. While Grace Church was definitely organized in June, 1701, the first specific local appointment by the S. P. G. was made to Jamaica, March 20, 1702, in the person of the Rev. Patrick Gordon, at the written request of prominent local churchmen, en- dorsed by others in New York City.
Of the seven men who came to Jamaica and other towns from the S. P. G. before 1704, Messrs. Gordon, Keith, Bartow, Honeyman, Urquhart, Mckenzie and Muirson, Lord Cornbury in 1705 wrote: "They have behaved themselves with great zeal, exemplary piety and unwearied diligence in discharge of their duty in their several parishes."
The Reverend Patrick Gordon was evidently the first appointee to Grace Church from the S. P. G. after a meeting in London which discussed the missionary work in the United States. Unfortunately, Mr. Gordon, after his arrival here, was taken ill the day before he was to conduct his first service and died some eight days later of a fever. He was interred under the Communion Table in the Stone Church, July 28, 1702.
Flushing in 1702 was a quiet farming hamlet, the majority of whose inhabitants were members of the Society of Friends, and the "Old Quaker Meeting House" was the only place of public worship. Into this quiet town came George Keith, the former zealous follower of George Fox, but now a missionary of the S. P. G. Some years before, as an accepted minister of the Quakers, he had visited Fhish- ing and Oyster Bay. On a bright Thursday morning in September, 1702, when the Friends were about to meet for worship, Keith, in company with the Reverend William Vesey, Rector of New York's Trinity Church, and the Reverend Mr. Talbot and others, entered the meeting house. Keith took his seat in the preacher's gallery and waited during the solemn silence which is an impressive form of the Friends worship. At the proper time he rose and began to speak, "announcing himself as a minister and missionary of the Church of England, whom the Queen and the Bishops had sent to preach in the colonies."'
There were, of course, loud protests and remonstrances, and "the scene which followed was not to edification". We are not apologists for Keith's uncouth actions, but he was a zealous convert and be- haved as such, basing his rights on his statement: "None of your speakers have any right to speak in your meeting houses, because
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you have not your meeting houses licensed as the Act of Toleration requires, nor have any of your preachers qualified themselves as that act expresses; viz., to sign thirty-four of the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. This you have not done, nor can you do, whereas I am qualified as the Act requires."
He again visited the meeting house in Flushing on a Sunday in December with similar results, and while we cannot for a moment countenance his acts in this respect, yet we must confess that his enthusiasm as a worker and builder in those days was not too different from the persistency of many of the licensed or itinerant preachers in other religious bodies. We must remember it was 1702 and not 1946. Wherever he and Talbot could bring together the scattered members of the Church of England, they did so and they organized them into congregations. This was particularly true in Hempstead and Jamaica, as well as in Flushing where, through their efforts, a successful impetus was given to the work of the Estab- lished Church as was also the case at Newtown, Oyster Bay, Hunt- ington and elsewhere on Long Island. True it is, nevertheless, that many of the Quakers and Independents were brought back into the fold of the English Church through the indefatigable efforts of this George Keith and his able assistant, John Talbot.
It is certain that these two missionaries had much to do in gathering the few scattered families of the mother Church in Flush- ing and Newtown and in organizing them into congregations, later to be known as St. George's Church and St. James' Church, respec- tively, which were commended to the care of the Rector in Jamaica.
The Reverend James Honeyman, in 1704, had been commissioned by the Governor, Lord Cornbury, to act as the second or temporary minister in Jamaica, with its dependencies at Flushing and Newtown. Obviously, he raised a veritable tempest about him. He writes: "To this parish (Jamaica) belong two other towns, viz., Newtown and Flushing, the latter famous for being stocked with Quakers, whither I intend to go, upon their meeting days, on purpose to preach lec- tures against their errors". By the middle of 1704 he had gone to Newport, Rhode Island, where he established a church and remained for forty-five years as its honored and revered rector. The third rector of these three parishes, the Reverend William Urquhart, was appointed by the S. P. G., July 27, 1704, and found the work difficult. Colonel Heathcote wrote in 1705: "Mr. Urquhart, minister in Jamaica, has the most difficult task of any missionary in this govern- ment-having a Presbyterian Meeting House on the one hand and the Quakers on the other, and very little assistance in his parish."
The Reverend Thomas Poyer ministered in these parishes from 1710 until 1731. He describes Newtown as "A place well affected, desirous to have a minister", but Flushing he describes as a town of Quakers. However, in his reports to the S. P. G., dated May 3, 1711, he writes: "I thank God the Church of England increaseth, for among the Quakers at Flushing . .. I have seldom so few as fifty hearers." In 1713 he states that he often has "more than an hundred hearers". He did an excellent amount of work, including continuous
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parish calling in Jamaica, Flushing and Newtown, and distinguished himself among his people by his sermons and lectures. The fact that he declined an offer of four hundred pounds to go to the West Indies while his stipend of these three churches was little more than the fifty pounds which he received from the S. P. G. and the partial taxes "in kind", giving as his reason that "he feared Jamaica, Newtown, and Flushing would be left without a clergyman", proves that his heart and soul were in the work of these difficult parishes. He died on December 31, 1731, having fought a good fight and having written to the S. P. G. toward the end of his ministry: "I have labored faith- fully in my Lord's vineyard and in my private advice from house to house as well as public discourses, I have exhorted them in faith in Christ and amendment of life, and to live in love."
The Reverend Thomas Colgan followed Mr. Poyer in 1732 as the rector and continued until 1755. It was during his incumbency that the Episcopal churches in Jamaica, Flushing and Newtown were built.
Grace Church was opened on Friday, April 5, 1734, for the first service, and it was a notable event in Jamaica. There is no reason assigned for thus naming the church. The origin of the name has been traced to a Grace Church Street, in London, where there was a church popularly called the Grass Church, because of the holding of a market close by, and spreading grass on the ground.
It was during the Rev. Mr. Colgan's ministry that the church at Flushing was also built, largely due to a certain Captain Hugh Went- worth, a merchant in the West Indian trade, who gave the ground and contributed a goodly sum towards the erection of the church. St. George's Church was finished and first used for worship in 1746. At Newtown the religious work for the Established Church had also been progressing under his able leadership, and in 1735 St. James' Church had been completed and used for worship.
Mr. Colgan wrote, November 22, 1740: "We have yearly for seven years last past increased in church members. So those build- ings are generally well filled in time of Divine Service, and the wor- ship of God is duly performed with decency and good order, the several sects which are around us do look upon the Church with a more respectful eye than formerly." Mr. Colgan died in December, 1755, "lamented and respected by all who knew him"'.
The Reverend Samuel Seabury, Jr., next became the rector of the three parishes and while there attracted many prominent gentle- men, such as Mr. John Aspinwall, a retired merchant who had left New York to take up residence in Flushing, and a Mr. Thomas Grenell, a loyal and active churchman. Through Mr. Aspinwall's good offices a school was established in Flushing and the school- master, a certain Mr. Treadwell, was induced to become the lay reader so that services might be held every Sunday instead of but once in three weeks. Soon thereafter Mr. Seabury caused requests to be made for charters for each of the three parishes.
One of the most remarkable figures in the history of the Episco- pal Church in this country, and in the history of the Church on Long
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Island, is Samuel Seabury, who was consecrated in Scotland in 1784 as the first Bishop in the United States. Bishop Seabury was one of a family which for five successive generations has been represented in the ministry and in government affairs. The Bishop's father was the Reverend Samuel Seabury, M.A., who at the time of the birth of his son, Samuel, in 1729, was acting as a licensed preacher among the Congregationalists in Groton, opposite New London, Connecticut. Sometime after this the elder Seabury became a convert to the Church of England and went to England for ordination. Upon his return he was settled in charge of St. James' Church, New London, from which, in 1743, he removed to Hempstead, becoming the rector of St. George's and there remaining until 1764 with missions at Oyster Bay and at Huntington.
During this period the future bishop prepared for Yale College, which he entered in 1744, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1748. From this college he afterwards received the degree of Master of Arts and this same degree later from Kings College, now Columbia. Following his graduation from Yale, being too young to be ordained in the Church of England, he was appointed by the S. P. G. to be a Catechist at ten pounds per annum at Huntington, some twenty miles distant from his father's parish at Hempstead. During these three or four years he studied medicine, as well as theology, for his father before him had prepared himself to minister to the bodily as well as the spiritual needs of his parishioners.
In 1752 he set out for his ordination in England, but since he would not attain the age for ordination until 1753, he spent one year at the University of Edinburgh studying "Physics and Anatomy" before going to London to take Holy Orders. In accordance with the approbation of Bishop Sherlock, who was then the incumbent of the See of London, he was ordained to the Diaconate on December 21, 1753. Through a special dispensation on the part of the Bishop of London, he was ordained to the Priesthood on the following Sunday by the Bishop of Carlisle, acting at the request of and in place of the Bishop of London.
Upon his return to America in 1754, he was assigned to the church in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he remained but three years, having before the end of this cure taken up his residence in Jamaica.
In 1757, Governor Hardy gave to the younger Seabury the cure of the parish in Jamaica which still was connected with the less thriving churches in Flushing and Newtown. In one of his reports he refers to Flushing as being "The seat of Deism and Infidelity", and he complained that not only was the work of conversion difficult, but there was also great backwardness in attending the church, her "Services and Sacraments". Mr. Seabury's stipend for all three churches amounted, apparently, to eighty pounds per annum, which was something more than that of the proverbial English Curate who was "passing rich with Forty Pounds a year". Constant clashing between the church people of Flushing and Newtown, who wanted a rector of their own, and Jamaica, at last wore out the patience of
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Mr. Seabury and, in 1765, he resigned his charge and moved to West- chester where he was still acting as the rector of the parish when the War of Independence broke out. Having taken the oath of alle- giance to the King, he was seized by the patriots and taken to Con- necticut. After his release he did medical work and the occasional functions of a priest.
At the close of the war he was elected the Bishop of Connecticut. When he went to England for his consecration as a Bishop, he found it impossible to be consecrated in England because, as he was now a citizen of the United States, he could not take the oath of allegiance to the crown. Hence, he appealed to the non-juring Bishops in Scot- land who would not take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary and their later successors of the House of Hanover, in the following form: "Can consideration be obtained in Scotland for an already dignified and well-vouched American clergyman now in London for the purpose of perpetuating the Episcopal Reformed Church in America, particularly in Connecticut?" This request was distinctly favorable on the part of English prelates who believed that this act should be accomplished, and hence, Samuel Seabury was consecrated "The Bishop of All America" by the three non-juring prelates, Kil- gour, Petty and Skinner, at Aberdeen, November 14, 1784.
After Bishop Seabury's return from England in 1785, he took the rectorship of New London, Connecticut, where he died, February 25, 1796. His son, the Reverend Charles Seabury, served as rector of Caroline Church, Setauket, which then included the missions at Huntington and Islip, from 1814-1844. The Reverend Samuel Sea- bury, son of Charles, was ordained in 1826 at Halletts Cove, then part of Newtown Parish. He officiated for about seven years in parishes in Brooklyn, Jamaica, Huntington and Oyster Bay, and as a classical professor at the Muhlenberg Institute in Flushing. His son, the Reverend William Jones Seabury, who became the Professor of Ecclesiastical Polity and Law in the General Theological Seminary in New York while holding no cure on Long Island, frequently offi- ciated in many of its parishes. William Jones Seabury's son is the Honorable Samuel Seabury, who is still living. In addition to holding many prominent positions in Jurisprudence and in Political Affairs he is one of the first citizens in New York City and in New York State.
After Mr. Seabury's (the future Bishop's) departure from the rectorship of the three parishes of Jamaica, Flushing and Newtown in 1765, they were without ministers for three years. However, through the kindly intervention of Dr. Auchmuty, the rector of Trin- ity Church, New York, the Reverend Joshua Bloomer became the rector in May, 1769, and remained as such until 1790.
The War for Independence caused a cessation of relationships between the mother Church in England and its dependent churches in the colonies, but in 1784 the Rev. Mr. Bloomer sent the last report of Grace Church to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the same year in which the last grant of £30 was made by the Society.
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We read that in the summer of 1786, in accordance with the resolution of the Church Wardens and Vestry of Grace Church at their annual meeting, a subscription was made by twenty of the parishioners amounting to £42 5s for shingling, painting, and other necessary repair's "for rendering the church decent and fit for public worship".
At the death of Mr. Bloomer in 1790, the Rev. Mr. Hammell succeeded as the rector of the three parishes and was the last rector elected and supported jointly by these three vestries. He continued until 1795. Later the Rev. Elijah D. Ratoon (e) was called to be the rector of Grace, Jamaica, and St. George's, Flushing. "The accept- able and prospering ministry of Mr. Ratoon was, unhappily for Grace Church, not long continued." He resigned June 4, 1802, to take charge of St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, Maryland.
By this time St. George's, Flushing, was prepared to support a minister of its own, and in 1803 the Rev. Abram L. Clark was inducted as the rector. The succeeding rectors were: The Rev. Barzillai Buck- ley, 1809-20; the Rev. John V. E. Thorne, 1820-26; the Rev. Wm. A. Muhlenberg, 1826-29; the Rev. Wm. H. Lewis, 1829-33; the Rev. J. Murray Forbes, 1833-34; the Rev. Samuel R. Johnson, 1834-35; the Rev. Robert B. Van Kleeck, 1835-37; the Rev. Frederic J. Good- win, 1837-44; the Rev. George Burcker, 1844-47; the Rev. J. Carpen- ter Smith, S.T.D., 1847-97; the Rev. Henry D. Waller, D.D., 1898- 1920; the Rev. William C. Craver, 1921-24; the Rev. George F. Taylor, S.T.D., 1926-30; the Rev. Hubert S. Wood, 1931 through 1943; the Rev. Dougald L. Maclean, January 1, 1944 -.
Obviously, the parish in Newtown, now Elmhurst, was either more inclined to the Episcopal Church or possessed more devoted. members, for there are records to substantiate that St. James' Church had become independent in 1795 and that from 1797 on had rectors of its own, with the exception that from 1803 to 1809 it shared the Rev. Abram L. Clark as its rector with Flushing. The rectors of the parishes in Jamaica, Flushing and Newtown remained the same until 1795 when Newtown called the Rev. Henry Van Dyke. Elm- hurst's succeeding rectors ,follow: 1797, the Rev. Henry Van Dyke; 1803, the Rev. Abram L. Clark; 1812, the Rev. William E. Wyatt; 1814, the Rev. Evan M. Johnson; 1827, the Rev. George A. Shelton, D.D .; 1864, the Rev. N. W. Taylor Root; 1868, the Rev. Samuel Cox, D.D. (afterwards Dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation) ; 1889, the Rev. W. Hudson Burr; 1890, the Rev. Edward Mansfield McGuffey, D.D .; 1929, the Rev. Charles Lawson Willard; 1940, the Rev. George Wellman Parsons.
From 1802 Grace Church continued as a parish without its dependency in Flushing. For the following six years there were at least six ministers in charge, namely, the Rev. Messrs. White, Stre- beck, Fowler, Ireland, Barry and Clowes.
Grace Church, on May 1, 1810, unanimously elected the Rev. Gilbert Hunt Sayres to officiate for them. They agreed to pay him seven hundred and fifty dollars annually, in two equal payments, with provision for six months' notice, should a separation be desired
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by the church or by the rector. The total income of the church during the first year, 1811, including interest on invested funds, was $904.84, of which only one-third was paid in subscriptions and collections. There was an average of about sixty pew holders during Dr. Sayres' ministry from the whole township of Jamaica.
Under Mr. Sayres, there was a larger number of baptisms than had previously been recorded, and the services of a Bishop to admin- ister the rite of confirmation were quite frequently employed. It was a time of growth in neighboring churches in Long Island.
The Hon. Rufus King, who had taken up residence in Jamaica and who earlier had distinguished himself as a delegate to Congress from Massachusetts in 1784, became a warden of the parish in 1805. To him was largely due the interest and repeated aid to that church which so materially affected the condition of Grace Church. He died April 29, 1827.
The ministry of the Rev. William Lupton Johnson, D.D., was twice as long as that of Rev. Dr. Sayres, and was the most extended and fruitful in its results of all of the rectorships since the founding of the church. It began in February, 1830, and ended at his death, August 8, 1870. Around Grace Church were gathering a number of intelligent and vigorous families, of social respectability and financial ability. It possessed an influence in affairs of the great city with which it was in frequent association in business, in professional and political circles.
On New Year's morning, 1861, Grace Church edifice was totally destroyed by fire. Fortunately, the silver sacred vessels and the Alms Basin, which had been presented by Queen Anne, were not consumed, and remain to this day as treasured possessions.
"From the ashes of the old Church rose in eleven months a Church edifice worthy of the faith and self-denials, prayers and labors which for more than a hundred and fifty years had here maintained the ancient liturgy, the principles and faith and character of the Anglican Church." This graceful and beautiful edifice was completed and furnished and consecrated within two years after the old church was consumed. The cornerstone was laid by Bishop Potter of New York whose diocese included Long Island.
From this time on Grace Church has maintained not only its his- torical significance as being the oldest regularly established parish on Long Island, but its eminent reputation of accomplishments and good works. It has been among the foremost of the churches in the diocese in making generous contributions for missionary purposes and in sharing in the founding of charitable institutions and in fur- thering all worthy causes. A complete list of the rectors herewith follows: The Rev. Patrick Gordon, 1702-died without serving; the Rev. John Bartow, 1702-03; the Rev. James Honeyman (temporary), 1703-04; the Rev. Mr. Urquhart, 1704-09; the Rev. Thomas Poyer, 1710-31; the Rev. Thomas Colgan, 1732-55; the Rev. Samuel Seabury, Jr., 1757-66; the Rev. Joshua Bloomer, 1769-90; the Rev. William Hammell, 1790-95; the Rev. Charles Seabury (a deacon, served 6 months) ; the Rev. Elijah Dunham Ratoon(e), 1795-1802; the Rev.
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Calvin White, 1802-04; the Reverend Messrs. George Strebeck, Andrew Fowler, John Ireland, Edmund D. Barry, Timothy Clowes, all served within the next six years, 1804-10; the Rev. Gilbert Hunt Sayres, 1810-30; the Rev. Wm. Lupton Johnson, D.D., 1830-70; the Rev. George Williamson Smith, S.T.D., LL.D., 1872-81; the Rev. Edwin B. Rice, 1882-92; the Rev. William Bottome, 1893-96; the Rev. Horatio Oliver Ladd, A.M., S.T.D., 1896-1910; the Rev. Rockland T. Homans, 1910-30; the Rev. Joseph T. Titus, 1930 -.
Prime, in his history of Long Island, suggests that there might have been Church of England services regularly held in Brooklyn in the seventeenth century, and it would seem logical that while the British were the authoritative government in the colonies, and cer- tainly while Long Island was held by the British forces, there were Prayer Book services conducted by Priests of the Church or by the Army Chaplains on the western end of Long Island.
ST. ANN'S, BROOKLYN
The history of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn Heights, as the mother Church of Brooklyn, is very brief and does not claim its founding until after the middle of the eighteenth century. It became the parent Church of St. John's, 1827; Christ Church, 1835; St. Mary's, 1836; the two St. Paul's (Flatbush, 1836, and Carroll Street, 1849). These churches in turn, as did St. Luke's (1841), became parent churches.
In 1784 Brooklyn had a population of less than twenty thousand inhabitants. In the same year that Samuel Seabury was consecrated the first Bishop in the United States, a few Church of England folk in the village of Brooklyn, near the ferry to New York, gathered together to form a permanent congregation in Brooklyn. Their minister was the Reverend George Wright.
The meeting place of the congregation was two communicating rooms in the residence of Garrett Rapelye, on the premises now known as 43 Fulton Street. When the Rapelye house was pulled down shortly afterwards, the congregation met for a time in the barn of Henry Middagh, behind his house where Fulton and Henry Streets now meet. It soon moved into a building that had been a barracks for British soldiers, at the corner of Middagh and Fulton Streets, which was decently refitted as a church. All these changes must have taken place within a year, for in 1785 the first church was conse- crated-a frame dwelling on Fulton Street opposite Clark Street. On April 23, 1787, the congregation was incorporated as "The Epis- copal Church of Brooklyn", and in 1787 it was admitted to the Diocese of New York, the fifth church on Long Island to be so admitted, following in the steps of Grace Church, Jamaica; St. George's, Flush- ing; St. James', Elmhurst, and St. George's, Hempstead.
On June 22, 1795, it was reincorporated under a new ecclesiasti- cal law, and the name was changed to St. Ann's Church. A new stone church was built facing Sands Street at the corner of Washington, and was consecrated in 1805. Still another, of brick, was built on the same site in 1825. The present building at the corner of Clinton and Livingston Streets was begun in 1867 and finished in 1869. It was consecrated in 1880.
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