USA > New York > The diocese of Western New York : a history and recollections > Part 5
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* Thomas D. Burrall (of Geneva), Gosp. Mess. XLII. 21, 37.
f M'Vickar, professional years of Bp. Hobart, 335-40.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
Bishop Hobart's visitation of 1815 included fourteen W. N. Y. parishes, from Utica to " near the western frontier," Batavia. In several of the places large numbers were confirmed. The congrega- tions in the country, he says, " and especially in its more remote dis- tricts, display a zeal worthy of high commendation." Persons of moderate wealth have given the tenth and the eighth of their whole property to the building of churches, besides contributions in the same proportion to the support of the Clergy. The missionary ground of Davenport Phelps, one hundred miles in diameter, where fifteen years ago there was not one permanent congregation, has now some fifteen with fair prospects of permanency and prosperity. Eleazar Williams, an educated Indian, is now Catechist and Schoolmaster for the Oneidas, officiating " with zeal, fidelity and considerable success," and is translating portions of the Bible and Prayer Book for their use. I need hardly say that this Mission was the germ of the noble and fruitful work of so many years in New York, and to this day at Oneida, Wisconsin, and the legitimate successor of that of the eighteenth century under Andrews, Ogilvie and Kirkland. The Bishop notes with great pleasure the increase of Bible and Prayer Book Societies (especially one in "the Western District") and the "uniform declaration" of the Missionaries " that they find no method of increasing our Church more effectual than the distribution of the Book of Common Prayer."*
.
The decease of Bishop Provoost, Sept. 6, 1815, hardly belongs to the story of Western New York, which he never saw, and is noticea- ble only as leaving the Diocese with two living Bishops instead of three.t Within six months more (Feb. 27, 1816) Bishop Moore had passed away. Of him Bishop Hobart truly said at his burial,
" He lives in the memory of his virtues. He was unaffected in his temper, in his actions, in his every look and gesture. Simplicity, which throws such a charm over talents, such a lustre over station, and even a celestial loveliness over piety itself, gave its colouring to the talents, the station and the piety of our venerable Father. You have not forgotten that voice of sweetness and melody, yet of gravity and solemnity, with which he excited while he chastened your
* Journ. N. Y. 1815, pp. 13-16.
t A full and interesting memoir of him is given in the Centennial History of the Diocese of New York, 1886, pp. 127-141.
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BISHOP HOBART AS COADJUTOR
devotion ; nor that evangelical eloquence, gentle as the dew of Her- mon."'*
* Cent. Hist. Dioc. New York, 147. It was this Sermon which was afterwards expanded with its notes, into the Bishop's noteworthy treatise, "The State of the Departed," which made him as it were the pioneer in the revival of some long- forgotten teaching of the Catholic Church. " When we reflect," says Bishop Coxe, "upon the feeble rubric with which our American Prayer-Book is disfigured to this day [1886], as touching the Article of the Creed on 'the Descent into Hades,' we may well admit the claims of Hobart to be considered a Doctor of our Church, inasmuch as by the publication of this Sermon, the faithful were established in the truth, and the last traces of ignorance and feebleness
in this part of a good confession were obliterated. It is not to be forgotten, that while with consummate tact he forbore to startle the Church with private opinions that gender strifes, he has yet left on record and commended to private devotion a legitimate prayer for the faithful departed, such as the Church of England has never repudiated ; which, in fact, she has retained, ambiguously, in her Offices, though not more ambiguously than similar ideas are formulated in Holy Scripture." Sketch of Bp. Hobart, Cent. Hist. Dioc. N. Y., 162.
CHAPTER IX
SOME EARLY CHURCHES
N the decease of Bishop Moore, the Rectorship of Trinity Church as well as the Episcopate of the Diocese fell upon Bishop Hobart ; and it was by no means a sinecure. " He preached as regularly in his course," says Dr. Berrian, "as the ministers who were associated with him, and attended with the same cheerfulness to every parochial call. Indeed, he seldom availed himself of those opportunities of leisure which it might have seemed he needed, but took more pleasure in giv- ing relief to others than in enjoying it himself."* All of which is to be taken into account in the story of his Episcopal work in Western New York.
The year 1815-16 witnessed the organization of eight new parishes, of which only Canandaigua, Batavia and Skaneateles, grew into importance, the others falling away with the failure of the little hill- side villages which were such a characteristic feature of the early settlement of Western New York, and which always, in course of time, descended the hill, either literally or figuratively. At Canan- daigua, S. John's Church, a revival of the old S. Matthew's of 1799, was organized by the Rev. Orin Clark of Geneva, but its first mis- sionary was the Rev. Alanson W. Welton, of Honeoye, who after a few months' service was replaced by the first Rector, the Rev. Henry U. Onderdonk, M.D., afterwards Bishop of Pennsylvania. Under his efficient leadership the parish grew rapidly in strength and numbers. His services were begun Jan. 14, 1816 ; on the 6th of May following, the corner-stone was laid of what Bishop Hobart calls " a remarkably beautiful and commodious" church, and which he elsewhere says
* In a criticism in an English "Theological Quarterly," called forth by his patriotic discourse on his return from England in 1825, Bp. Hobart is spoken of as "the American prelate dispensing his Sunday sermon to his city congregation in his fashionable chapel," and knowing little of "the life of the measureless major- ity of the clergy of England,-the seclusion in the remote village, the separation from the habitual excitements of life, the humble toil, the unvaried and uncheered consignment to a rank of society from which nothing can be learned but resigna- tion." Chr. Journ. XI. 324 (Oct. 1826).
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SOME EARLY CHURCHES
" may serve in some measure as a model for other churches ; an edi- fice that attracts the notice and admiration of every visitant to the beautiful and flourishing village which it adorns." It was finished (free from debt) at a cost of $14,000, and consecrated Dec. 12 of the same year. A picture of it adorns the title page of the first number of the monthly magazine begun by Bishop Hobart in 1817, under the title of " The Christian Journal," and edited by him until his decease in 1830. To tell the truth, the architectural excellence of S. John's was pretty much all in its front, which an American Churchman of those days might well think, with the Rector, to be " in elegant taste." Inside it was like all churches of its day, almost square, flat-roofed, whitewashed, with enormous windows but no stained glass ;* at one end a great gallery filled (after some years) with a really fine organ (by Henry Erben of New York, the great builder of his day) and a very " mixed " and very capable choir, some of whose younger mem- bers lived and sang when they had come to fourscore years.
The " chancel " end was after Bp. Hobart's own model, (as pub- lished by him in the Christian Journal of 1826,) a survival of which may be seen to this day in S. Luke's Church, Rochester. Only at Canandaigua the pulpit, against the east wall, was of such dimensions that under it was contained not only a flight of stairs to the basement Sunday School room, but the entire space allowed for robing room. Its broad front was covered a yard deep with blue broadcloth edged with gold lace, and its towering height was reached with some pains by something like a hall stair-case on one side. In front of this was the reading desk, of at least equal length and width, with its similar decorations of cushions, broadcloth and lace ; on the central cushion a great folio Bible turned one way, flanked by two immense folio Prayer-Books of Hugh Gaine's magnificent Standard edition of 1793,1 turned with equal precision the other way. (I often used to wonder from our pew, what would happen if those respective positions should be reversed.) In front of the reading desk was a little Holy Table of cherry, also covered with blue broadcloth carefully secured with brass-headed tacks; and all this was enclosed by
* But they were painted inside (to imitate leafage, I think), so that the glare was somewhat subdued.
t One of these splendid old Prayer Books is now in the Library of the De Lan- cey Divinity School.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
a semi-circular cherry rail, on whose centre-post stood on occa- sions of 'Baptism a large silver bowl. I must add that the heavy old-fashioned altar-plate was also of solid silver, and the damask linen (my mother's gift, by the way) of finest quality ; and that in spite of some queer old customs long since passed away and forgotten, I have never seen in any church the Holy Communion celebrated more reverently and devoutly than in some
years in " Old S. John's." Some other " ways" of that early day do seem quaint enough now. At the nine o'clock Sunday School the Rector came in to the " lecture room" in a flowing silk cassock girded by a "surcingle" of the same, like an officer's sash ; when he appeared in church (from under the pulpit) he wore over this a volu- minous silk gown, and over this a surplice of corresponding fullness, broad black scarf and white bands. The " Ante-Communion Ser- vice" as well as Morning Prayer was usually said in the desk, (in which the Priest was carefully secured by an immense door at one end, and an impassable wall at the other,) and I remember the surprise and something like alarm with which I saw a visiting clergyman descend to the Altar for this part of the Service. Venite Exultemus was sung heartily but very deliberately (with a wonderful flourish or trill on the organ at the beginning and in the middle of every verse), most of the year to the still familiar " Boyce in D" (then in E, by the way) ; in Lent to Langdon in F ; Te Deum only on special days, but invariably to Jackson in F; the other Canticles to music seldom changed, and therefore familiar ; so with the " Psalms and Hymns," the latter increased from 56 to 212 only a little before my day. During the hymn the Rector of course disappeared under the pulpit, and re-appeared and ascended it in black silk (with a crape " scarf," however),* and when the hymn ended, he knelt down and said the collect " Direct us," sometimes adding (or prefixing) the Lord's Prayer. The Morning Service was finished with a collect and benediction, the Evensong (not that we called it by that name), by a hymn, collect and blessing, the Minister remaining through all in the pulpit. The offerings (at Morn-
* This transformation scene was of course the point of most intense interest to us children, though we never could see the "reason why." But when we " had Church " at home it was thought proper that a silk gown should be pro- vided for the very "little minister," as well as a surplice fashioned out of a " dimity " petticoat.
S. JOHN'S CHURCH, CANANDAIGUA, N. Y. The " Old Church "; Consecrated 1817
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SOME EARLY CHURCHES
ing Service only) were taken (except on Communion Sundays) during the hymn before Sermon. " Psalms and Hymns," by the way, were announced, read through, announced again, and the first verse (or half of it) read again, so there was no room for mistake about it .*
Wainwright's "Music of the Church" (1828) and Muenscher's "Church Choir" were the standard music-books of my day ; before that came the Rev. Dr. William Smith's "Churchman's Choral Com- panion to His Prayer Book," 1815, 1 which contained those familiar chants, with the " old " Gloria in Excelsis (always sung at Evening Prayer except on the last day of the month, when Laudate Dominum (Ps. 150) was substituted), credited there to " the Edinboro Collec- tion." The surplice was worn only on Sundays or great Feasts like Christmas Day and Eve, up to about 1843, and for some years before 1834 not at all ; I well remember its re-introduction on Christmas Day, and the comments of the congregation on the inordinate length of its sleeves.
Night services (at least on Sundays) were very rare ; the first I remember were about 1840, when a fierce attack on the Church by a Congregational Minister led the Rector to open his church for a third service, at which he read Chapman's " Sermons on the Church " to the great satisfaction and decided benefit of his people. On Commun- ion Sundays, after the two o'clock service, the children were cate-
* Bishop White says (Memoirs of the Church, p. 260, ed. 1880), that he was not in any church in England (in 1772 and 1787) "wherein the people stood dur- ing the singing of the metre psalms. And yet it seems well attested of late, (1820,) that the posture of standing prevails in London and its vicinity, and else- where. The custom had travelled to some congregations in this country, wherein, until lately, it is not probable that there was a single congregation that stood during this part of the service." Hence the resolution of the General Con- vention of 1814 (see Journal, Bioren, pp. 303, 312), "that it be considered as the duty of ministers of this Church to encourage the latter posture, and to induce the members of their congregations, as circumstances may permit, to do the same ; allowance to be made for cases, in which it may be considered inconven- ient by age, or by infirmity." In 1810-II, the people stood during the metre Psalms in Christ Church, New York, and in Connecticut ; in other New York churches they sat, but in Trinity, they rose and stood when the Lord's Prayer happened to be read in the Lesson. (Churchman's Magazine, N. Y., Vol. 67, viii, 67.) This last was a very old country custom in England. See Bp. Words- worth, Notes on Services, 1898, p. 57. The custom of standing soon became general.
t I have inherited a copy of this curious old book (printed from copper-plates).
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
chised at the altar rail, and those instructions are vivid in a memory which has lost nearly every word learned in Sunday School. All this detail, utterly unimportant in itself, and really twenty years after the building of old S. John's, may yet have some interest as the personal memories of a long-past and almost forgotten day, and as a fair type of services and customs general if not universal in the State of New York. In many other dioceses, it may be added, the surplice, weekly Epistle and Gospel, monthly Communion, and chants, were then unknown, and in many parts of New York their restoration after long disuse was due to Bishop Hobart's vigorous personal efforts. As late as 1844 the Rector of the oldest Western New York parish, Paris Hill, reports that "the use of the surplice has been restored," and " the monthly administration of the Holy Communion introduced."*
The most notable event of the year 1817 was the planting of the Church in what are now the two great cities of the Diocese; in Buf- falo by the Rev. Samuel Johnston, " Missionary in Genesee and Niagara Counties," who came from Batavia in the fall of 1816 to give about one-fourth of his Sundays to that "flourishing village," where, in the house of Elias Ransom, (father of that notable Church- man Judge Elias Ransom of Lockport,) he organized S. Paul's Church, Feb. 10, 1817, with some twenty families, whose "readiness to cooperate " with him, and " animated zeal for our Zion " he highly commends. They subscribed at once $5,000 for building a church, but it was not finished and consecrated till 1821, seven years after Buffalo had begun rebuilding from its total destruction in the War of 1812. Three months later Mr. Johnston organized S. Mark's Church, Le Roy, also with twenty families, " most of them regularly nurtured in the Church, familiar with her doctrines and principles, and alive to her interests."t
Dr. Onderdonk, " at Canandaigua and parts adjacent," reports among his missionary labours "the first public services of our church at Rochesterville," March 13, 1817, when twenty-eight men signed
* Journ. W. N. Y. 1844, p. 75.
t Jour. N. Y. 1817, p. 29. He adds (what we might not expect) that "the utmost harmony prevails in the different denominations, and there are many who serve God in the beauty of holiness." The first Wardens of S. Paul's were Erastus Granger and Isaac Q. Leake; the first Vestrymen, Samuel Tupper, Sheldon Thompson, Elias Ransom, John G. Camp, Henry M. Campbell, John S. Lared, Jonas Harrison and Dr. Josiah Trowbridge.
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SOME EARLY CHURCHES
a " Declaration of Attachment to the Protestant Episcopal Church ;" and on the 14th of July following, twenty of these met in a school- house on the east side of the Genesee River, in the town of Brighton, Ontario County, and under the guidance of Dr. Onderdonk and the Rev. George H. Norton, elected Col. Nathaniel Rochester and Sam- uel J. Andrews Wardens, and eight others Vestrymen of " S. Luke's Church, Genesee Falls." Mr. Norton took charge of this infant parish (having been ordered Deacon June I), in connection with Carthage and Pittsford, with occasional services at " Sodus Bay, Vienna " (Phelps) and other " adjacent places." It was vacant in June, 1820, when, after a spirited contest with the Romanists for a grant of a lot (on which S. Luke's Church now stands) "to the first religious society that should take possession of the same and build a church thereon," began the erection of a wooden church 38x46 feet, on a subscription of $1,270, of which $238 was in cash, the rest in "goods," "lumber," labour (" Blacksmithing, Painting, Tailoring work, Shoemaking, Hats, Books or Stationery," &c.), while a second subscription of the same date for a " Steeple or Cupola " is largely in " Cider and apples, Tailoring work, Combs at cash prices, Meat, Saddlery, Pork out of my Shop " and other such commodities. The church was consecrated by Bishop Hobart, Feb. 20, 1821, the Rev. Francis H. Cuming, Deacon, having taken charge of the parish a month previous for the term of one year, at a salary of $475 .*
This year (1817) marks also the first services of the Church at Vernon, Locke, Dryden, Livonia, Bridgewater, Greene, Bain- bridge, Turin, Boonville, Leyden, and Windsor, and parishes organized in Turin, Oswego, Avon, and Waterloo; the missionaries of that year being William A. Clark (" at Manlius and the counties adjacent "), Ezekiel G. Gear (who many years later did such notable work in Minnesota), Samuel Johnston, William B. Lacey, Daniel Nash (in Chenango County as well as Otsego, and among the Oneidas), Henry U. Onderdonk, Joshua M. Rogers, Alanson W. Welton, Rus- sel Wheeler, and the faithful Indian Catechist Eleazar Williams, not yet " the Lost Prince " or even in Deacon's Orders. Would that we had space for something more than the names of these noble men !
* Annals of S. Luke's Church, by the Rev. Henry Anstice, D.D., pp. 7-20. The wooden church was replaced by the present one of stone in 1825.
CHAPTER X
VISITATIONS OF 1818 : THE ONEIDAS
N BISHOP HOBART'S Address of 1817 is an earnest warning against the temptation to substitute all sorts of " undenominational " work in Bible Societies, meetings for extempore prayer, and the like, for the authorized teaching and work of the Church. How strong that temptation must have been in the feebleness of the early missions we can well imagine, and its disastrous consequences are told in more authentic records than the witty chronicles of " The Rector of S. Bar- dolph's."*
" No opinion," he says, " is more unfounded than that there is a deficiency as to the means of pious instruction and devotion in the forms of our Church. She has provided Daily Morning and Evening Prayer ; and hence her ministers, where circumstances admit and require, can assemble their flocks for any purposes of Christian edifi- cation, not only daily, but twice in the day, and lead their devotions to Heaven in prayers, to the use of which he hath bound himself by the most solemn obligations, and than which surely no one of her ministers will presume to think that he can make better. But to sup- pose that our Church, while she thus furnishes public edifices for the celebration of the social devotion of her members, warrants their meet- ing elsewhere, except where peculiar circumstances, in the want of a public building, or in the size of a parish, render it necessary ; or to suppose that while she thus fully provides in her institutions for the Christian edification of her members, she thinks it can be necessary, for this purpose, to have recourse to private meetings, the devotions of which tend to disparage the Liturgy, and eventually to lessen the relish for its fervent but well-ordered services, would be to impute to her the strange policy of introducing into her own bosom, the princi- ples of disorder and schism, and perhaps, of heresy and enthusiasm." And he ends with a large citation from " one who lived in times when the private associations commenced, the effects of which he deprecated, but which were finally awfully realized in the utter subversion of the goodly fabric of the Church whose ministry he adorned, and in the triumph, on her ruins, of the innumerable forms of heresy and schism."t
* By the Rev. Frederick W. Shelton, LL.D., New York, 1853.
1 Journ. N. Y., 1817, p. 14.
n
TOUS
THE ORIGINAL ALTAR, CHANCEL-RAIL, READING-DESK, AND PULPIT IN ST. PAUL'S FRAME CHURCH, BUFFALO.
Retained when the church was enlarged in 1828. The Marble Font was afterwards used in the stone church until the fire of 1888.
Reproduced by permission from the Evans-Bartlett History of St. Paul's Church. Buffalo, copyrighted and published 1903,
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VISITATIONS OF 1818 : THE ONEIDAS
The reference is of course to RICHARD HOOKER (Eccl. Polity, V. xxv. 5). I may add that Bishop Hobart's warnings were heeded both by Clergy and Laity, and largely prepared the way for that steady and uncompromising loyalty to the teaching and worship of the Church, which, under his great successor Bishop De Lancey, gave Western New York the title of " The Model Diocese."*
The months of August and September, 1818, were given by Bishop Hobart to one of those extraordinary visitations of his great Diocese, from New York to Buffalo, the labour and fatigue of which cannot easily be realized in this day, when the very traditions of old time meth- ods of travel have almost faded out of memory. Almost the whole journey was by " stage," at the rate of from four to five miles an hour, often by night as well as day ; the occasional relief of transition to the quietly gliding but no more rapid canal-boat was yet far in the future. This journey comprised visitations (in Western New York alone) to Utica, Turin and Lowville "on the Black River," Paris, Oneida, Manlius, Onondaga, Auburn, Geneva, Pultneyville on Lake Ontario, Canandaigua, Victor, Pittsford, Honeoye, Avon, Rochester, Penfield, Batavia and Buffalo ; the consecration of three churches, and several ordinations. Among the consecrations was the little church (S. Paul's) at Allen's Hill, now complete after eight years' hard work, whose story has been told so delightfully by Dr. John N. Norton in " Allerton Parish." But by far the most interesting event of the visitation was the service for the Oneida Indians, which may best be told in the Bishop's own words.
" It is a subject of congratulation that our Church has resumed the labours which, for a long period before the Revolutionary War, the Society in England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts directed to the religious instruction of the Indian tribes. Those labours were not wholly unsuccessful ; for on my recent visit to the Oneidas, I saw an aged Mohawk, who, firm in the faith of the Gospel, and adorning his profession by an exemplary life, is indebted, under the Divine blessing, for his Christian principles and hopes, to the Missionaries of the Venerable Society. The exertions more recently made for the conversion of the Indian tribes, have not been so suc- cessful, partly because not united with efforts to introduce among
* The venerable John Adams of Lyons told me many years ago that he learned his Church principles, as well as his deep love for all her services, from Bishop Hobart's teaching as reflected in the lay-members of old S. John's, Canandaigua, and especially, I may add, from my own mother, one of its earliest communicants.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
them those arts of civilization, without which the Gospel can neither be understood nor valued ; but principally because religious instruc- tion was conveyed through the imperfect medium of interpreters, by those unacquainted with their dispositions and habits, and in whom they were not disposed to place the same confidence, as in those who are connected with them by the powerful ties of language, of man- ners, and of kindred. The religious instructor of the Oneidas employed by our Church enjoys all these advantages. Being of Indian extraction, and acquainted with their language, dispositions, and customs, and devoting himself unremittingly to their spiritual and temporal welfare, he enjoys their full confidence ; while the educa- tion which he has received has increased his qualifications as their guide in the faith and precepts of the Gospel. Mr. Eleazar Wil- liams, at the earnest request of the Oneida chiefs, was licensed by me about two years since, as their Lay Reader, Catechist, and Schoolmaster. Educated in a different Communion, he connected himself with our Church from conviction, and appears warmly attached to her doctrines, her Apostolic ministry, and her worship. Soon after he commenced his labours among the Oneidas, the Pagan party solemnly professed the Christian faith. Mr. Williams repeatedly explained to them in councils which they held for this purpose, the evidences of the Divine origin of Christianity, and its doctrines, insti- tutions, and precepts. He combated their objections, patiently answered their inquiries, and was finally, through the Divine bless- ing, successful in satisfying their doubts. Soon after their conver- sion, they appropriated, in conjunction with the old Christian party, the proceeds of the sale of some of their lands to the erection of an handsome edifice for Divine worship, which will be shortly completed.
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