USA > New York > The diocese of Western New York : a history and recollections > Part 9
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* The first mention of Sunday Schools in the Journals of New York is in Bp. Hobart's Address of 1817 (Journ. p. 17), where he says, "Sunday Schools have been organized in this city (New York), in union with our Church, which promise the most beneficial effects." The Christian Journal of the same year (I. 295) gives the "Constitution of the N. Y. P. E. S. S. Society," in connection with which are schools of Trinity, S. Paul's, S. John's, Grace, S. Mark and S. James, in that city. The first Sunday Schools in W. N. Y. are reported from Turin (now Constableville) and Oxford, in 1822; but instruction of children by catechis- ing of one form or another is mentioned long before.
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it is hardly too much to say, slurred over and kept out of sight. From his time New York was distinctly what was then called a " High Church " diocese ; not, certainly, in ritual, according to the ideas of later years, but positively in regard to the Divine Constitution of the Church and her Ministry, the obligation and spiritual benefit of her Sacraments, and her Law of Public Liturgical worship. In these points the " Western District " of his Diocese, especially. presented a striking contrast, at the close of his Episcopate, not only to many other Dioceses of that day (which was a decidedly " Low Church " day for this country in general), but to itself in the earliest years of his charge of it. Bishop Coxe, in the New York " Centennial " already referred to,* gives an amusingly sympathetic defence of Bishop Hobart's effort to give importance and dignity to the celebration of the Holy Communion by a new arrange- ment of altar, desk and pulpit, which from his time was for many years almost universal, but now survives in a solitary instance in this Diocese. In the Christian Journal, XI. 134, may be seen the ground plan and elevation, engraved at his request, of this curious arrange- ment, with which, he says, "the interesting solemnities " of the holy offices belonging to the altar may be celebrated in the view of all the congregation, instead of being hidden, as they had been thus far, behind the pulpit and desk. Fifteen years later, the best improvement on this plan that could be thought of was simply to take away the desk (a change suggested, I believe, by Bishop H. U. Onderdonk), and use the altar with a lectern, for Morning and Even- ing Prayer, leaving the pulpit still attached to the east wall. But in all this, as well as in his proposition of 1826 to permit the shortening of the Daily Service, so as to do away with the hitherto frequent omission of the Communion Office, his object was to secure a sub- stantial benefit to the worshippers, even at the cost of what to him- self might be a personal sacrifice.t
And lastly, the Bishop left a deep impress on Western New York
* Cent. Hist. Dioc. N. Y. p. 164.
t Bishop Hobart's great memorial in Western New York is of course Hobart College, appropriately named from him by Bishop De Lancey. The Diocese erected shortly after his death a monument in S. Peter's Church, Auburn ; and another was placed in Trinity Church, New York, by the vestry of that parish, of which he had been assistant Minister or Rector thirty years.
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in the character of the Clergy whom he gathered round him for its hard and self-denying missionary work, and who became what they were, and did the work of their day, largely through the stimulating and guiding personality of their Leader. Of most of these there will be more to tell later on.
CHAPTER XVI
BISHOP ONDERDONK : FANATICISM : 1831-3
NLY a month after Bishop Hobart's decease, the Annual Convention of New York met in Trinity Church, and elected as his successor on the first ballot, and with "great unanimity,"*the Rev. Benjamin Tredwell Onder- donk, D.D., an Assistant Minister of Trinity Church, as all his predecessors had been. He was consecrated in S. John's Chapel, on Friday, Nov. 26,by Bishop White, assisted by Bishops Brow- nell and H. U. Onderdonk. The sermon on the occasion was by Bishop Brownell, but after the " laying on of hands," Bishop White, in a brief address of strong commendation of the character and work of Bishop Hobart, congratulated the Diocese on the choice of a successor " to whose merit," he says, " it cannot but be a powerful testimony, that he is the individual on whom the deceased Bishop would have wished the choice to fall ; a fact, known to him who now affirms it."t
Dr. Onderdonk had been for some years facile princeps in the Dio- cese of New York, in which he had served from 1816 as Secretary of the Convention, from 1818 as Deputy to the General Convention, from 1820 as Professor of the Nature, Ministry and Polity of the Church in the General Theological Seminary, and from 1827 on the Standing Committee. Son of Dr. John Onderdonk, a much respected physician of New York, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Henry Moscrop (one of the early Connecticut clergy under Bishop Seabury), he was born in that city July 15, 1791, graduated at Columbia College in 1809, and made Deacon by Bishop Hobart Aug. 2, 1812, and Priest the next year ; D.D. Columbia 1826.
He was far from being brilliant or eloquent ; not specially attract- ive as a preacher, so far as I can learn or remember ; nor of much depth or originality. But he was a man of extraordinary executive
* Chr. Journ. XIV. 317. " A resolution was passed unanimously that the Con- vention should unite on the following morning in a solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God for the harmony and good feeling which had prevailed, and for the prompt and happy decision of the important question of the election of a Bishop." 1 Chr. Journ. XIV. 376.
BENJAMIN TREDWELL ONDERDONK Fourth Bishop of New York
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ability and unwearied industry, of excellent judgment, and thorough devotion to the work which the Church laid upon him, whether as Priest, Doctor* or Bishop. His almost unanimous election to succeed such a man as Bishop Hobart testifies sufficiently to the character which he bore among the Churchmen of New York. His Episcopal work for eight years in Western New York was a model of zeal, faith- fulness and thoroughness which even such a man as Bishop De Lan- cey thought it worth while to follow closely, especially in planning his visitations and in his addresses to the Convention.
I must note here, as a striking testimony to the results of Bishop Hobart's Episcopate in Western New York, the fact that at this Convention of 1830 the conviction was expressed that the " Western District " must soon have its own Bishop. Dr. Rudd says that the suggestion "was regarded with surprise, and considered as full of evil,"t being doubtless to many an absolutely new idea, nothing less than a " State " having been the jurisdiction of a Bishop up to this time.
And it is also worthy of note that though Bishop Hobart's suc- cessor was elected "with great unanimity," some votes both of Clergy and Laymen were given for William Heathcote De Lancey. #
Bishop Onderdonk's first visitation of Western New York began with the Commencement of Hobart (then Geneva) College, Aug. 3, 1831, and the Institution of the Rev. Nathaniel F. Bruce, M.D., on the following day, as Rector of Trinity Church, Geneva, in suc- cession to the Rev. Richard S. Mason, D.D., who had become President of the College the year before. This short visitation extended only to Sept. 7, and included forty-four parishes and mis- sions in fifteen counties, in which 659 persons were confirmed. §
At the Convention of 1831 the Bishop gave his Primary Charge, on the Church's " Standards of Faith," "Liturgical Worship," and " Divine Constitution of the Ministry." It follows, both in teaching and style, the works of Bishop Hobart, and may be read with profit at this day. ||
* In the General Theological Seminary.
t Gospel Messenger, XII. 112. (Aug. 18, 1838.)
# Teste Mr. Henry E. Rochester (a member of the Convention of 1830), at the Semi-Centennial of W. N. Y. 1888. (Journ. p. 6.)
§ Of these 50 were in Geneva, 47 in Buffalo, 106 in Rochester (the only town in W. N. Y. with more than one parish), and 52 in Utica.
|| It is published in full in the Gospel Messenger, V. 178, 181, 186.
.
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The Missionary Reports for 1831, though interesting as always, present no features which we can give in detail. In certain respects they are nearly all alike,-the steady growth of the Church, in a season of unusual and excessive religious excitement among all classes of Protestant Christians, through a more earnest and faithful observance of her own Prayer Book services. Through all these years of the " thirties," which were rapidly preparing the way for the new Diocese, there is a distinct and constant advance in the tone of Church principles and practice, a growth in life even more than in numbers.
The subsidence of the religious fever of 1829-31 was followed the next year by another wave of excitement of a somewhat similar character, consequent on the first epidemic of Asiatic Cholera throughout the State of New York. This new disease found physi- cians as well as patients utterly unprepared to meet it, either by medicine or by sanitary precautions, and the wide-spread terror which its advance everywhere caused added of course to its fatal results, in a degree which we can hardly realize at this day. This was more especially the case, of course, in New York, where that year Columbia College for the first time held no Commencement ; but the fear pervaded the whole State, and indeed the whole country. The Bishop however made his summer visitation as before, being in W. N. York from July 28 to Aug. 27, officiating in 30 parishes and missions (in ten of which there was no church as yet), consecrating several churches, ordaining and instituting several clergymen, and confirming 375 persons. His journey was from Chenango county on the East, to Buffalo, where it was interrupted by the death of his father in New York, obliging him to return home.
It seems remarkable that Western New York, and especially Ontario county in its original shape (including several counties, as Wayne and Yates, since formed from it)-a region settled almost wholly by people from the proverbial " land of steady habits"-should
* The Bishop bears strong testimony in his address of 1832 to the fidelity of his clergy during the prevalence of the cholera, both in city and country. " Almost to a man," he says, " they remained faithfully at their posts, fulfilling, at the bedsides of the sick, and in the families of the bereft, the fitting pastoral offices, and providing, in the services of the sanctuary, that refuge in calamity which is dear to the pious heart, and those means of the spiritual improvement of God's judgments which they so largely afford."
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from its earliest years have been swept over again and again by suc- cessive waves of religious fanaticism or popular delusions. First, in 1787, even before Geneva had an existence, came from Rhode Island the followers of Jemima Wilkinson, " the Universal Friend," who represented herself as a re-incarnation of the Saviour of Men, and in that character ruled with absolute sway over her numerous dis- ciples on the banks of Seneca Lake (at Dresden, which they called "Jerusalem," and parts adjacent), not only till her death in 1819, but for thirty years more through her successor, Rachel Malin. Before this wave of misbelief had quite spent itself, came up, in 1827-30, around the hamlet of Manchester, half way between Geneva and Can- andaigua, the " little cloud" of Mormonism, which after three-quar- ters of a century overshadows more or less every Christian country, and is making a persistent and not altogether unsuccessful fight for political supremacy. Coincident with this was the Anti-masonic movement of 1827-35, which, though rather moral than religious in its origin, and chiefly political in its sphere, was as really an outbreak of fanaticism as any of the others. That had its beginning chiefly in Canandaigua, but in 1830 cast 128,000 votes in New York and adjoining States ; in 1832 carried Vermont for its presidential candi- date, and in 1835 elected a governor in Pennsylvania.
About this latter year began the preaching of the Second Advent of Christ as immediately at hand, by William Miller, which however did not attract much attention, or gather numerous disciples, until near the year 1843, the time fixed for the fulfilment of his prophecy. Its fail- ure for that year by no means discouraged his disciples, who had now increased to many thousands, and were nowhere more numerous and enthusiastic than in Western New York. They now fixed upon a day in October, 1844, (I think it was the 21st,) for the end of the world ; and that night a large number from Canandaigua and its vicinity assembled on a high hill west of the village, clad in white robes (" ascension robes," they called them), to encounter the fiercest storm (almost a hurricane) which had swept over Western New York in many a year. How they got home I never heard .* It was long after this that the delusion gradually faded away. One of the disciples, a Can- andaigua physician, sold his farm, like S. Barnabas ; but, unlike him,
* I remember, as a child, being kept awake nearly all that night, but I think it was more by the actual storm than by the threatened judgment.
·
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took a mortgage for the purchase-money, thus making a provision for either world.
And finally, in a hamlet in Wayne county, within a few miles of " Mormon Hill," began, twelve years later, the mysterious " Roches- ter Knockings" out of which has been developed the enormous delu- sion of modern Spiritualism. Two other movements of mixed relig- ious and socialist type did not have their origin in Western New York, but were most thoroughly exploited here ; the " Fourierism" of 1840 (now so completely passed away that its very name has no meaning to most people), also in Ontario county, and the free-love " Commun- ity" which till very lately kept its place and followers at Oneida.
If the Church of to-day in this Diocese, with all its external pros- perity, has much less power over the actual belief and life of the people than it ought to have, these facts in our earlier history may furnish some reason why.
The " Committee for Propagating the Gospel " (still keeping its old name from 1796) report in 1832 no less than 46 " missionary stations " in Western New York, nearly all supplied with the ser- vices of clergymen. In Lockport (Christ Church, with 30 families, and " several pious Church people in the Upper Town," where Grace Church was not yet in being, hardly thought of ) the Rev. David Brown reports that a visitation of cholera " in its most appalling form " produced, not " panic," but " a serious and wholesome alarm in a high degree favourable to the cause of religion. My attention to the sick, the dying and the dead, rendered extra services impracticable ; nor were they needed. The funerals were well attended, and so were the regular services of the Church. The pestilence has now in a great measure subsided, leaving a deep and glowing impression of mercy in the midst of judgment."* Another missionary (John D. Gilbert, at Catharine) says that " the efforts made to produce relig- ious excitements and to draw the people after them, have led our people to set a higher value upon the devotions of the Church." Here the Gospel Messenger "is a weekly missionary, speaking to many among us with most salutary effect of Christ and His Church." Of the old church of 1797 in the " Oquaga Hills " (S. Luke, Har- persville) the Rev. David Huntington says that " a few men, who by industry and frugality have so far succeeded in cultivating a
*Journ. N. Y. 1832, p. 33.
S. PETER'S CHURCH, WESTFIELD, N. Y. Consecrated 1833. (With later Tower and Porch.)
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MISSIONARY REPORTS, 1831-3
country by nature sterile, as to have just raised themselves above absolute poverty, have constantly maintained Divine service by lay- reading, and have at length erected and furnished a handsome church, with no aid whatever " except the scanty stipend of their Missionary. In Mayville (under the Rev. Rufus Murray), " the Church has become permanently established, and the people continue steadfast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers." In Westfield (with the same Missionary), " the Church in her infant state is far from discouraging," and the people have nearly completed " an edifice beautiful in design and neatness," of which the Bishop, who on August 25 held the first service within its unfinished walls, speaks in terms of high praise. At Water- town (the Rev. Richard Salmon), the Church has had to contend with "obstacles and difficulties of no ordinary description," its friends are " comparatively few and powerless, but united, zealous and persevering," and so have undertaken to build a church " of very respectable dimensions," and already have it enclosed. In Syracuse (the Rev. Palmer Dyer), the people " manifest the same prompt and energetic spirit in the support of the Church, and the transaction of ecclesiastical affairs, which appears in the conduct of their secular concerns ;" certainly not an ordinary state of things in a country parish. But Syracuse was already aspiring to become a city, though as yet but a small village. These illustrations of mis- sionary work might be greatly extended did space and the reader's patience permit ; but they will give some idea of what the Church was doing in this transplanted and somewhat transformed New England .*
The Bishop bears grateful witness the next year to " the uncom- mon degree of health with which Providence has blessed our borders, a merciful compensation for the dire inflictions of sickness and mor- tality of the preceding year, and no less to the " general healthful moral and spiritual state of the Diocese," evidenced in the " daily increas- ing call for the services and teachings of the Church," and "the
* For these reports in full, see Journ. N. Y. 1832, pp. 33-50. I must not omit to mention that in October of this year the church at Manlius (built in 1813) was moved from its original hillside location to its present site " on wheels, with bell hanging (and probably ringing) and stoves standing, without racking the joints, or jarring off a square foot of plastering." A similar story is told of S. John's Church, Speedsville, Tioga County, at a later day.
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effort to improve them to the purposes for which they were estab- lished," by " living righteously and soberly, and in all Christian quiet- ness, meekness and sincerity." In 67 places he had ordained nine Priests and twenty-two Deacons ; consecrated twenty churches, and confirmed 1101 persons ; travelling some three thousand miles, to almost every extremity of the State .* His visitations of Western New York were from May 30 to June 9, and Aug. 7 to Sept. 18. Churches were consecrated at Sackett's Harbor, Oriskany, Auburn, t Centrefield, Lockport, Westfield, Hammondsport, Marcellus, Geddes, # Constantia, Perryville, Jamesville, Homer, Speedsville, Rome and Watertown. In Hector, a venerable English Churchwoman, [Mrs. Elizabeth Woodward,] had not only given the ground for a church and rectory, [and a glebe of five acres, ] but, in a cold, indifferent and careless neighbourhood, contributed $400 a year for the Rector's salary. She afterwards built the church and rectory ; but she did even more than this in giving her son and grand- son, the late Reverends John W. and Charles Woodward (the latter of Hobart College 1844) as devoted and efficient mission- aries of the Church in Connecticut, Western New York and Minne- sota. § At Elmira, the Rev. Thomas Clark (not the present Senior
* In the Rev. G. W. Kitchin's Memoir of Bp. Harold Browne (of Winchester) Lond. 1895, p. 364, I find that in 1869 "he consecrated no less than five new churches ; and in speaking on the subject, ventured to doubt whether at any time since the beginning of the Christian era, any Bishop had ever consecrated so many churches in a single month. It seems that the Bishop of New York in his visitation of 1833 consecrated (in W. N. Y.) five churches in five successive days, seven in eight days, and ten in seventeen days.
+ S. Peter's Church had been burned in 1830 and rebuilt. -
# "The Apostolic Church," near where is now S. Mark's. A story (I fear apocryphal) is told of Bishop Hobart's sitting up all night with the vestry, endeavouring in vain to induce them to change this singular parochial name. If the story has any foundation, it would seem to belong to Bishop Onderdonk's time. There is no such parish now.
. § The Rev. Charles Woodward, whom I well knew, was a thorough gentle- man and scholar as well as faithful Parish Priest; Tutor in Hobart 1847-8 ; Chaplain and Professor of Languages in Andalusia Coll., Pa .; Principal of Oxford Academy; Rector of Trinity Church, Seneca Falls, and many years at Rochester, Minn., where he died Nov. 7, 1891, aet. 70. He was one of the most lovable men I ever knew. His father, the Rev. John W. Woodward, an earlier W. N. Y. Missionary, ordained by Bp. Onderdonk in 1831, died in 1842. Another John, elder brother of the Rev. Charles Woodward, d. at Hector, Aug. 25, 1865,
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Bishop) finds " a small but zealous company " of Churchmen (who have already begun building a church), with thirteen Communicants. At Brownville the little parish "organized [see page 70 above] under peculiar circumstances, has been the pioneer of the Church in this county, and has sustained the principal share of the burden, amid great embarrassments and difficulties, of propagating the Faith in the neighbouring villages." At Homer, the Rev. Henry Gregory, (long after this the Nestor of the Church in Syracuse if not in the whole Diocese), reports an astonishing amount of varied missionary work, of which I wish it were possible to give the details. At Cazenovia the Rev. Algernon S. Hollister (Missionary at Manlius and Fayette- ville) has organized a parish, and has " reason to hope that a respect- able congregation may be gathered in this flourishing and finely sit- uated village." At Sodus (Ridge), " S. John's Church, under the Rev. Kendrick Metcalf (now removed to Le Roy), has, with the help of $400 from benevolent individuals, completed their neat and beautiful church." * And so on, and so on. One more paragraph must be given to the last Episcopal visit to the Oneidas in New York, the remaining portion of them soon after joining their brothers at Green Bay, Wis. " The Mission Church of S. Peter," says the Bishop, " was crowded with a large assemblage of both whites and Indians. The Morning Prayer having been read in the Indian tongue by the Missionary, with a peculiarly solemn and impressive performance of the chants, and the singing of a hymn by the Oneidas, I preached the Ordination Sermon in English, concluding with an address, through an interpreter, to the Indians," of whom nine were confirmed. " Messrs. Erastus Spalding and William Staunton were then ordained Deacons, after which the Holy Communion was administered," a large number of the Indians receiving. The Gloria in Excelsis was chanted by the Indians in their native tongue. " The services occu- pied about four hours, but the attention of the numerous congrega- tion, both Indians and whites, appeared to be unwearied."
Of the two deacons ordained on this occasion, one, Erastus Spald- ing, the early missionary at Sodus and Phelps, died at the latter place in 1853, leaving four sons of more than ordinary character and ability
aet. 52, Senior Warden of S. James's Church, Watkins, to which the family attached themselves after the little church at Hector had been given up.
* Journ. N. Y. 1833, pp. 41-55.
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to succeed him in the Ministry .* The other, William Staunton, (D.D. 1856,) survived to tell the story of this Ordination and his mission- ary work in Western New York, to the Council of 1885, the Semi- Centennial of the first Convention in the " Western District."t
* Henry W., D.D. (d. 1891), Erastus W., D.D.(d. 1902), Charles N., D.D., and Edward B., L.H.D., (d. 1903), all graduates of Hobart College. Three other young men came into the ministry from Mr. Spalding's Mission at Sodus, one of whom (William S. Hayward)is now missionary to the Onondagas at Onondaga Castle, N. Y.
+His reminiscences are given in full in the Journal of W. N. Y. for 1885, p. 159, and are well worth looking up and reading. Dr. Staunton d. 1889. A son (John A., Hobart 1858) and grandson (John A. Jr.,) succeed him in Orders.
CHAPTER XVII
MOVEMENT FOR A NEW DIOCESE, 1834
22 HE year 1834 introduces a new and deeply interesting subject,-the proceedings which resulted, four years later, in the formation of a new Episcopal See by the division of the original Diocese of New York into two,-the first such division in the history of the Church in this country.
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