USA > New York > The diocese of Western New York : a history and recollections > Part 6
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" In the work of their spiritual instruction, the Book of Common Prayer, a principal part of which has been translated for their use, proves a powerful auxiliary. Its simple and affecting exhibition of the truths of redemption is calculated to interest their hearts, while it informs their understanding ; and its decent and significant rites contribute to fix their attention in the exercises of worship. They are particularly gratified with having parts assigned them in the service, and repeat the responses with great propriety and devotion. On my visit to them, several hundred assembled for worship ; those who could read were furnished with books; and they uttered the confessions of the liturgy, responded its supplications, and chanted its hymns of praise, with a reverence and fervour which powerfully interested the feelings of those who witnessed the solemnity. They listened to my Address to them, interpreted by Mr. Williams, with so much solicitous atten- tion ; they received the laying on of hands with such grateful humil- ity ; and participated of the symbols of their Saviour's love with such tears of penitential devotion, that the impression which the scene made on my mind will never be effaced. Nor was this the excitement
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VISITATIONS OF 1818 : THE ONEIDAS
of the moment, or the ebullition of enthusiasm. The eighty-nine who were confirmed,had been well instructed by Mr. Williams; and none were permitted to approach the Communion, whose lives did not cor- respond with their Christian profession. I have admitted Mr. Williams as a Candidate for Orders, and look forward to his increased usefulness, should he be invested with the office of the Ministry."*
Of Mr. Williams' subsequent work, and the after history of the Mission, something will be said further on. The Bishop goes on to speak of a young Onondaga chief who was at this time beginning a course of instruction to fit him to become a missionary to his own people. The history of this young man, known afterwards as Abram La Fort, is a very sad one. Under Bishop Hobart's patronage, he was educated partly by the Rev. Samuel Fuller, Missionary at Rens- selaerville, and partly at Hobart College, in the class of 1829 ; returned to his people at Onondaga, where he became Catechist and Lay Reader, and led " a devoted, exemplary and Christian life." But in time, left to himself, without the help he should have had from the Church, and allied by marriage and social life to his Pagan country- men, he fell away, and for years before his death, Oct. 5, 1848, was outwardly an adherent of the opponents of Christianity. Only at the point of death he sent, too late, for his old teacher, Mr. Williams, and left word for him " that he died in the belief of the Christian religion, and acknowledged the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour."t
A small part of the Oneidas, who had been taught many years before by Samuel Kirkland, were known at this time as the " First Christian Party." The chiefs of the " Pagan Party," on their acknowledgment of Christianity, addressed a letter to the Governor of New York (De Witt Clinton), stating that they had wholly renounced Paganism, and wished to be known henceforth as the "Second Chris- tian Party." The two were soon united under Mr. Williams, and from that time to this the whole body of the Oneidas, numbering usu- ally about a thousand, have continued faithful members of the Church. The " Second Christian Party" in 1818 succeeded (by the sale of part of their land to the State of New York) in raising about $4400 to build their church, which was accordingly completed, and consecrated by Bishop Hobart Sept. 21, 1819, as S. Peter's Church. On this occa-
* Journ. N. Y., 1818, p 18.
+ J. V. H. Clark, Onondaga, II. 114-23.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
sion the Bishop baptized two adults and forty-five children, and con- firmed fifty-six persons. Father Nash says of these Oneidas two years later that in no congregation had he beheld such deep attention, such humble devotion. He baptized on this visit five adults and fifty children. Mr. Williams, it should be said, was not admitted to Deacon's Orders till June 18, 1826 .*
The Bishop made a fifth Episcopal visitation of Western New York in the fall of 1819, at which he reports 212 confirmed, 79 at Paris Hill alone. New services are reported at Sackett's Harbor, Danby, t Geneseo, Hamburgh, Black Rock, Bergen, Montezuma, Williamsville, and Sherburne ; parishes organized at Verona and Geneseo ; conse- crations at Binghamton, Oneida, and Paris Hill ; churches nearly com- pleted at Buffalo and Catharine. The Bishop deeply laments his inability to send Missionaries to the many places asking for them, and the opportunities lost to the Church in consequence. The stipends of the Missionaries actually in service are only $175 each. " What can be done?" he asks. "I see the contributions of Episcopalians extended to religious institutions not immediately connected with their own Church ; I see their bounty flowing in channels that convey it to earth's remotest ends ; and yet many of their fellow Episcopalians in this State are destitute of the ministrations and ordinances of the Church, and unable, from their poverty, to procure them."
The Bishop speaks in high praise of the zeal and faithfulness of the Churchmen of Utica and Paris in maintaining regular services by lay-reading during long vacancies in their rectorship,-in the latter case without the failure of a single Sunday.
The Rev. William A. Clark, Missionary at Buffalo and " parts adjacent" (i. e. Batavia, Le Roy, Williamsville and Hamburgh) would wish to represent the state of his congregations as prosperous, " but cannot dissemble. At Buffalo the depression of the times is peculiarly great ; many families have removed, and of those remaining I hear noth-
* Clark, Onondaga, I. 231-8. Journ. N. Y., 1819, pp. 17, 20.
1 " In this village there are five or six families of enlightened and pious Epis- copalians who evince great solicitude to have the Church established among them." (Report of the Rev. Leverett Bush of Oxford, 1819.) Foremost among these were three Connecticut Churchmen, Walker Bennett, Alva Finch and Isaac Jennings. The first of these used to gather his family and neighbours on Sundays for service in his own house long before a parish was crganized. We shall hear of him later.
Whereas ciredifice has been created for the hurto . Les of her blu worship by the congregation of The "wies? Espuede church in The town of Richmond , county of Ontario & Rate of new york daily incorporated by The title of " Pauls Church , & The Marchus , bro hr, men & congregation Than of the said thank were con vous that the soud edifice should be "olenonly set aheart to the worship of almighty You aworking to the liturgy &usage of the Protest Ggia & brush in The united States of america Be at There for known that on The twenty Third day of September in The year of our Lord one . Thousand eight hundred & eighteen , I consecrated a building erected in The town of Richmond" county of ont ana & state of new york by the name of 1 Pauls Church & ur the the prescribed sites & whensine hes separated it from all unhallowed, ordinary & worldly vaca; & dedicated it to the service of almighty
god , for reading his holy word, for celebrating his holy sauraments , for offering to his glorious majesty the scurifices of prayer & thanksgiving for beeping . The people in hus name , & for the performance of all other bily offices according to The liturgy & usage of the Protest Spise therh in the united States of Unierica
In testimony where of Ihave herunho rex my hand & real this twenty Mund day of September in The year of our Lord one Thousand eightcom . hundred b eighteen -
Bis kwh of The who& Speel brunch in The state of new-york.
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VISITATIONS OF 1818 : THE ONEIDAS
ing but complaints of embarrassment." Still they have nearly completed (with the help of friends in Albany and New York) a very handsome Gothic church, but have not funds to finish it. " Buffalo," he con- tinues, "will ultimately be a place of such importance, that I think every exertion ought to be made to maintain the ground that the Church has gained." Batavia is in much the same condition. At Black Rock our numbers are increasing, and the people are generally serious and attentive. By the other missionaries (Welton, Norton, Gear, Pardee, Bush, Rogers) encouraging reports are given of Rich- mond (Honeoye, now Allen's Hill), Le Roy, Geneseo, Livonia, Ber- gen, Waterloo, Vienna (Phelps), Catharine, Oxford, Binghamton, Windsor, Onondaga, Tully, Otisco, Pompey, Cazenovia, Manlius, Lenox, Danby, Turin, Sackett's Harbor, Boonville .* It is a pity to give nothing but names from these reports ; but the very enumera- tion of places shows how the Church was extending from year to year through this rapidly growing " Western District," settled almost wholly from New England, and happily, with a good leaven of the Churchmanship learned through many a hard fight in Connecticut under Bishop Seabury and his colleagues and predecessors.
* Journ. N. Y., 1819, pp 24-32.
CHAPTER XI
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION : GENEVA COLLEGE
HE TENTH year of Bishop Hobart's Episcopate marked a great advance in the work always so near his heart, of Christian education, and especially the train- ing of young men for the Ministry of the Church. Most of all in the " Western District " of his Diocese was this need pressing sorely upon him. Western New York was no longer, as on his first visitation, largely a wilderness, but contained a population of over half a million (the whole State having only thirteen hundred thousand), mostly, as has been said, people of New England ancestry, intelligent, enterprising, and already prosperous in most of the settlements. The two Missionaries had increased to twelve, the eleven parishes to thirty-three, the two hundred communicants to nearly a thousand. From this very growth of the Church arose its greater need.
The little Divinity class at Fairfield, under the grant of 1813 from Trinity Church, New York, had kept on its work with from four to seven students, since 1817 under the care of the Rev. Daniel M'Don- ald, a clergyman eminently qualified for that office. Meantime the Church at large was awakening to its duty in this regard. In the General Convention of 1814 a resolution was offered by the Rev. Christopher E. Gadsden (afterwards Bishop) of South Carolina, to report a plan for a Theological Seminary. It gave way to a resolution of the House of Bishops directing each of their number to report to the next General Convention on the expediency of such an institution .* In 1817 a plan was adopted (as prepared in the House of Bishops) establishing a "General Theological Seminary in the city of New York," and appointing a committee of three Bishops ( White, Hobart and Croes), three Priests and three laymen, to carry it into effect. The instruction of six students was actually begun in that city under the authority of the Committee, by the Rev. Drs. Samuel F. Jarvis
* Journ. Gen. Con. 1814 (Bp. Perry's Reprint), pp. 408, 424.
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THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION : GENEVA COLLEGE
and Samuel H. Turner, May 1, 1819 .* Funds came in slowly, and the General Convention of 1820, in spite of the munificent gift of sixty New York city lots by Dr. Clement C. Moore, resolved to trans- fer the Seminary to New Haven. This plan was frustrated by the bequest of Mr. Jacob Sherred in March, 1821, of $60,000, for a Sem- inary in New York (whether General or Diocesan) and the Seminary was finally established, with Bishop Hobart's full cooperation, in New York, as a general institution of the Church, but with the " under- standing " that a " branch school " should be established in Geneva, to which place the Bishop had already determined to remove the little Theological School at Fairfield. t
The next steps are well told by one who took an active part in all this work from that time on, the late Thomas Davies Burrall of Geneva.
" On the evening of Sept. 23, 1818, at the house of Col. Samuel Colt, in Geneva (in presence of the Rev. Orin Clark, Rector of Trinity Church, Col. Colt, Major James Rees and myself), Bishop Hobart announced his purpose of building up a stronghold for the Church in the West (as he then expressed it), at Geneva-an Institution not only of learning but of religious worship and instruction in aid of the Church and its Ministry. In his quick, decisive manner, he pro- ceeded at once to unfold his scheme, and point out the way by which it could be effected. He proposed, first, that the Geneva Academy already chartered, should be placed, by consent of the Trustees, under the control of the Vestry of the Church in Geneva, and elevated to the rank of a college, and by enlarging the number of Trustees from thirteen to twenty-four, to place the direction of the College in the hands of Churchmen ; and secondly, he assured his friends that on this being done, the Diocesan Convention of New York would found and endow the College under the charter, as an acknowledged Insti- tution of the Church throughout the State, for the promotion of relig- ion and learning combined, in the broadest acceptation of the terms. " The Trustees, in view of the prospective advantages to accrue to
* Bishop Coleman, Church in America, p. 303, says 1817; but this is an obvious misprint for 1819. See Journ. Gen. Con. 1817, p. 64, and 1820, pp. 64- 71, (Bp. Perry's reprint, I, 479, 569-75), and Cent. Hist. Dioc. N. Y., 375.
1 Journ. Gen. Conv., 1821 (reprint), p. 613 ; Bp. White, Mem. Ch. 52 (ed. 1880) The "Constitution " says, "one or more branch Schools in the State of New York, or elsewhere ;" Bp. White says "it is understood, that a branch School is to be forthwith established at Geneva, in New York." About this " understand- ing " he could not be mistaken. Fourteen of the Seminary Trustees (out of 38) were to be chosen by New York.
# Gosp. Mess. XLII. 161. (Oct. 8, 1868.)
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
the village, assented to this proposition, and surrendered the control of the Academy to the Vestry of the Church in Geneva; and on their application to the Regents, a charter was granted on the 10th of April, 1822, ' on condition that the Trustees should within three years raise and secure to the satisfaction of the Regents, a permanent fund of sixty thousand dollars, yielding a net annual revenue of four thous- and dollars.'
" The conditional charter having been thus obtained from the Regents by the Trustees, and the Bishop, on his part, having urged upon the Convention the importance of an Episcopal College in the West, and pointed out the superior advantages of Geneva for such an Institution, describing it as 'easy of access from the immense countries bordering on the Western Lakes, and from those upon the Atlantic-immediately on the bank of Seneca Lake, commanding a view of this extensive and beautiful sheet of water-the cultivated shores that confined it and of the mountains that bound the distant prospect, in the midst of a very populous and highly cultivated country,' etc .; and the committee having been appointed to report upon the subject ; on the 10th of April, 1823, in Diocesan Convention, the Committee to whom was referred so much of the Bishop's Address as relates to the establishment and patronage of the College proposed to be founded in the village of Geneva, beg leave to submit the follow- ing resolutions :
"' Resolved, that the Convention is deeply impressed with a sense of the advantages that would result from the establishment of a Col- lege combining an accurate and extensive course of literary and scien- tific education with a system of religious worship and instruction according to the principles of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and that, in their opinion, the local situation of Geneva, and the conditions of the charter recently granted to the College proposed to be founded in that village, are eminently favourable to the attainment of these objects.
" ' Resolved, that the Bishop and Standing Committee of this Dio- cese be requested to prepare and carry into effect, by and with the advice and approbation of the Trustees of the proposed College, such a plan for the collection of funds and the endowment of the College, as may seem to them best fitted to promote the general and perma- nent interests of the Church, and to recommend the Institution to the patronage and confidence of Episcopalians throughout the United States.'
" Which resolutions were at once accepted *, and in furtherance of the plan proposed for the endowment, the Trustees of the Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning, on the 24th of April, 1824, granted $20,500 to the Trustees of Geneva Academy, to aid in secur-
* Christian Journal, VII. 71.
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THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION : GENEVA COLLEGE
ing the College Charter, on condition that the charter should be obtained, and that the College Trustees 'should make satisfactory provision for the education of twelve students to be named by the Soci- ety, free from charge of tuition.'*
"On the 8th of February, 1825 (only three days short of the three years allowed by the Regents in which to raise and secure the $60,000 in order to obtain the charter), the Trustees exhibited to the Regents funds to the amount required, the securities to which were deemed satisfactory, and the Charter was issued."t
Several of the Trustees joined in a bond for the payment of certain funds not then available, making a total of $60,000 secured, (in addi- tion to about $10,000 of uncollected subscriptions), and the College was organized and went into operation May 24, 1825. The first Commencement was held in the summer of 1826, and the six students graduated (under Dr. M'Donald, the Acting President) were all in Deacon's Orders, having been students of the Theological School at Fairfield. The present beautiful site of the College was the choice of Bishop Hobart, # and the first building on it ("Geneva Hall") was erected while Hobart College was only Geneva Academy.
For the carrying out of the Bishop's plans, and the supervision of all the Educational work of the Diocese, the " Protestant Episcopal Theological Education Society in the State of New York " was organ- ized by the Convention of 1820, under the Bishop as President, thirty Vice-Presidents and not less than one hundred and fifty members " from different parts of the Diocese." The Society reports the next year that the grant from Trinity Church, New York, to the Fairfield Academy, had been transferred by that Corporation to the Society's " Interior School " at Geneva, and that the " Western Branch of the Seminary " was now permanently located at that village, under the style of " The Interior School of Geneva." For this School the Rev. Daniel M'Donald was appointed Professor of the Interpretation of
* College Records, I. 30.
f Id. II. I.
# So Mr. Burrall testifies from personal knowledge. "At early morning in the month of September, just as the first rays of the sun were glancing over the waters of our beautiful lake; . . on consultation and deliberation on the different opinions of those present, he, in his brisk and decided manner, struck his cane to the ground, saying, 'Here, gentlemen, this is the spot for the College ;' and on that spot it was placed." Gosp. Mess. XL. 150. See Bp. Coxe's note, Cent. Hist. Dioc. N. Y., p. 158.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
Scripture, Ecclesiastical History, and the Nature, Ministry and Polity of the Church, and Librarian ; the Rev. John Reed, Professor of Biblical Learning ; and the Rev. Orin Clark, Professor of Systematic Divinity and Pastoral Theology. In the General Theological Sem- inary four students have been under instruction through the past year ; five have lately begun their first year's course, and four or five more are expected. In the Geneva School there are ten students, and for them, a "commodious stone building in an eligible situation on the bank of Seneca Lake, with thirty rooms for students and a convenient Chapel, will be ready May 1, 1822." Seven of the ten students were the first graduates of the College in 1826-7. They " have the privilege of completing or revising their course " in the Seminary in New York. At the Convention of 1822, the Bishop was enabled to announce his full concurrence in the consolidation of the General Theological Seminary with that of the Diocese in the City of New York, and the happy settlement of a long-debated and perplexing problem .*
The year 182 1 records another extensive visitation of Western New York, from Utica to Buffalo, with the consecration of S. Luke's, Rochester (the first church, of wood), and S. Paul's, Buffalo, and the confirmation of 240 persons ; new organizations and services at Hol- land Patent, Rome, Churchville and Chittenango. On the other hand, the stipends of the nine missionaries are reduced (regretfully) to $150 a year.t The founding of the "Christian Knowledge Society of the Western District of New York" this year, for the publication of Church books and tracts, resulted six years later in the establishment of " The Gospel Messenger and Church Record of Western New York," a paper which for almost half a century was of inestimable value in the work of the Church, not only in the Diocese, but far beyond its limits.
The following year, 1822, though full of work of one kind or another, began a long suspension of the Bishop's visitations of "the Western District." In fact, he had for years been working beyond the strength of any man, and in the fall of 1823, after severe and protracted illness, he reluctantly gave up all official duties for more than two years, spent in Europe, most of the time in England. Readers of his life will
* Jour. N. Y. 1821, pp. 20-48; 1822, pp. 18-22.
t Journ. N. Y. 1821, pp. 14, 55.
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THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION : GENEVA COLLEGE
hardly need to be reminded of the remarkable results of that visit in his intimate intercourse with Hugh James Rose, through which, in the providence of God, the " Oxford Movement " of the Church of Eng- land had its beginning ; and his enthusiastic reception by his Diocese on his return .*
Those years of the Bishop's absence, however, show no faltering in the missionary work of the Diocese, but a steady enlarging of its bounds ; especially in Chautauqua County (Fredonia, Mayville, West- field, Jamestown, Ripley and Dunkirk); Onondaga (S. Paul's, Syra- cuse, Marcellus, Camillus, Geddes); at Wethersfield Springs, Sackett's Harbor, Ithaca, Palmyra, Homer, Warsaw, Bath, Ham- mondsport, Fulton, New Hartford, Stafford, Penn Yan, Hunt's, Moravia, Brockport, Clyde, Canastota, etc. The work of the Oneida mission was faithfully kept up by Mr. Williams, and encouraged in 1825 by a small annuity from the United States. The College received the endowment of the " Charles Startin " Professorship of the " Evidences of Christianity," by the bequest long before promised to the Bishop. t Again the missionary stipends are reduced, to $125, at which pitiful sum they remained for more than forty years, to 1866, and through all the long and grand Episcopate of Bishop De Lancey. It is a kind of blot which occurs too often in Western New York history.
* I have spoken (p. 42 sup.) of the diatribe of an English periodical of a very different school, occasioned by his patriotic sermon on his return home. Hugh James Rose was foremost among those who ably and lovingly defended him in England.
t See p. 39 sup.
CHAPTER XII
VISITATION OF 1826 : S. LUKE'S, ROCHESTER
ILL the month of September, 1826, was occupied by Bishop Hobart in one of the most remarkable Episco- pal visitations recorded in this country. I give the substance of it almost in his own words. He left Bos- ton (whither he had gone to preach at the institution of Alonzo Potter-afterwards Bishop of Pennsylvania-as rector of S. Paul's) "on Friday, Sept. I, and on Sunday, the 3d, officiated at the Little Falls, on the Mohawk, near three hundred miles distant.
"This journey[through Vermont] was rendered unusually difficult by the extraordinary freshets in the Green Mountains, which had seri- ously injured the roads, and in some places rendered them almost impassable. On Monday, the 4th, I consecrated the Church at New Hartford, four miles west of Utica, and the following morning admitted the Rev. Amos C. Treadway, the officiating Minister there, to the Order of Priests. In the afternoon I officiated at Paris, and confirmed 7 persons ; the next day, at Manlius, 40, and in the after- noon officiated at Jamesville. Thursday, the 7th, I confirmed 12 at Onondaga in the morning, and in the afternoon 6 at Syracuse. On the 8th, I confirmed in the morning 14 at Marcellus, and preached at Skaneateles in the afternoon. On the 9th I confirmed 21 at Auburn ; on the roth, Sunday, I consecrated S. Matthew's Church, Moravia, Owasco Flatts, and confirmed 17 ; and on the 11th, I con- secrated S. John's Church, Ithaca, and confirmed 16. The next morn- ing I travelled to Danby, and comfirmed 12, and travelled twenty-five miles to Catharine Town, and preached in the evening ; the dis- tance, and the extreme badness of the roads through a new and very mountainous country, where, for some distance, it was necessary I should leave my carriage and walk, preventing me from fulfilling the appointment which had been made for me at an earlier hour in the afternoon. The next day I proceeded twenty miles to the Painted Post, on the Flatts of the Tioga, where there is some prospect of a congregation of our Church being established, and confirmed 5 per- sons. The succeeding day, the 14th, I confirmed at Bath, thirty miles distant, 5 persons. The 15th, at Penn Yan, thirty-two miles distant, 13. The 16th, I consecrated S. Paul's Church, Waterloo, and confirmed 16 persons ; and on Sunday, the 17th, officiated at Geneva morning and afternoon, and confirmed in this, one of the most
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