USA > New York > Queens County > Jamaica > The origin and history of Grace church, Jamaica, New York > Part 2
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As early as 1656 land was purchased of the Rockaway Indians for settlement in Jamaica, from whom the name of Gemego or Jameco was derived, and which prevailed instead of the name of Rusdorp, which the Dutch govern-
*J. G. Van Slyke Historical Discourse, 1876. The Reformed Church, Jamaica.
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ment assigned to it. On Aug. 30th, 1663, it was voted, and it was agreed by the town, that "a meeting house shall be built by the town, 26 feet square." This was erected, and the worshippers were called to it by the beating of a drum. The services were only occasional in this the first town church, and the organization of a Dutch church is placed in the year of the first recorded baptism June 1, 1702. Religious dissensions among the Dutch families of Queens County caused some to enter into the communion of the Episcopal Church, the adherents of which completed the second town church by their aid. The Dutch Consist- ory, in 1715, built their own church edifice for all their people in Queens County, having become happily at peace with one another.
(1672.) The war between England and Holland brought New York and the eastern towns of Long Island again under Dutch rule for a year, and a Dutch Reformed Church was established in Flushing, but that village had no resident minister. But in a year, through the declaration of peace, Major Andros was appointed by the Duke of York Governor of New York, and the English were ever afterwards in permanent possession of the east end of the Province.
(1683, Oct. 17.) Under the administration of Andros the first representative body in the Province of New York held its first meeting. There were eighteen freeholders of the Province in this General Assembly. They divided Yorkshire into three Counties, Kings, Queens and Suffolk, establishing their present County lines except as affected by the formation of Nassau County.
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(1685.) When the Duke of York became King James II and New York a royal Province, the General Assembly was abolished and James was proclaimed Sovereign of the Province. This seriously affected church movements, which were made under the representative government. In 1862 the Presbyterian Church was existing in Jamaica and public worship established, but no church was built. There were Church of England people in Jamaica, New- town and Flushing at this time, and Dutch Reformed and Friends in each of these townships, but none of these had erected places of worship except the Dutch in Jamaica. The Province of New York was under the supervision of the Committee on Foreign Plantations in King James' Government. By royal authority new instructions were issued to Governor Dungan of New York, which brought the Church of England into prominence. These instruc- tions gave the Church of England the same position in New York that it had always occupied in the Mother Country. They were as follows: "Ye shall take special care that God Almighty be devoutly and duly served throughout your government: the Book of Common Prayer as it is now established read each Sunday and holi- day, and the Blessed Sacrament administered according to the rites of the Church of England that no min- ister be preferred by you to any ecclesiastical benefices in that Province, without a certificate from the most Rever- end, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, of his being con- formable to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and of good life and conversation." (Doc. III, 36,372.)
Thus the Church of England became the established church of the Province; but also, by further provision in
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these instructions to the Governor, liberty of conscience and religion was given to persons of all creeds. The Governor was directed "to permit all persons of what religion so ever quietly to inhabit within your government without giving them any disturbance or disquiet whatever for or by reason of their differing opinions in matters of religion. Provided they give noe disturbance to the public peace, nor doe disquiet others in the exercise of their re- ligion." (Doc. III, 218, 359, 373, vid Waller's History of Flushing, pp. 79, 80.)
Under James II all New England, New York and New Jersey were included in the administration of Governor Edmund Andros, who was assisted by a council of forty- two appointed by the King from the several Colonies. The Governor and seven members of the Council could at any time make laws. But in the two years during which this government continued no further mention is made of the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury or of the Bishop of London.
(1689.) The Colonies rebelled against Governor Andros when William, Prince of Orange, and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of England. The towns of Flushing, Hempstead, Jamaica and Newtown petitioned for a new Governor, and were delivered from the oppres- sion of those who had usurped the authority of William and Mary, who, after the arrival of the new Governor, were convicted of treason and murder, and their leader executed.
The Quakers built the first meeting house in Flushing in 1694, where the only stated religious services in any of these towns up to this time were held.
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(1693.) There was so much neglect of religion in these towns of Long Island, and so much laxity of morals as to compel the notice of Governor Fletcher of New York. In an address, he said: "I have the power of collating or suspending any minister, and I will take care that neither heresy, sedition or rebellion be preached, nor vice and pro- fanity encouraged. It is my endeavor to lead a pious, virtuous life and to give a good example." This Governor compelled the Assembly to adopt an act "for settling ye ministry." It prohibited profaneness, ordered that two Protestant ministers should be sent to Queens County- one to have the care of Jamaica and adjacent towns-and levied an assessment of £60 each year in country produce, at money price, to pay the minister's salary. Ten vestry- men and two church wardens were to be elected and the parish tax rigidly enforced.
(1693.) The Church of England idea of worship was thus made prominent. Yet these efforts of Governor Fletcher were apparently ineffectual, for his ministerial act was ridiculed, and unobserved. But they led to some action in Jamaica towards building a church.
(1694.) This was the beginning, three years before Trinity Church of New York was incorporated, of a con- troversy which lasted twenty-six years, and its bitter flavor remained in the community a hundred years longer.
(1697-98.) A town meeting was called to see about building a meeting house. A committee was appointed to solicit and gather material, while even yet the site was not determined, but ordered to be located in the highway. A year after it was voted to erect a church or meeting house, and that a committee should canvass the town for
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voluntary offerings to build the church. In a somewhat contentious spirit others got subscriptions and material enough to put up the building three feet from the ground and then stopped.
In 1698 the population of Flushing was 530 whites and 130 negroes, and that of Jamaica was about the same.
(1699, May 16.) The Assembly Church Building Act of the next year made it possible to finish the building by assessments and compulsory payment of these, by those who were of all religious faiths and preferences.
There now were many dissenters who, being forced to pay rates for the religious services, sided with those who held that a maxim of English law was applicable in Jamaica. All meeting houses raised by public tax become vested in the ministry established by law, and so of all lands and glebes set aside by public town meetings. Every church of common right is entitled to a house and glebe; and they belong to the Rector, ex officio.
This church had been largely built by private subscrip- tions, and as those who were elected under the Act requir- ing wardens and vestryment to be elected were in a majority Presbyterians, they raised an issue with the Church of England people in Jamaica.
(1699.) This was the beginning of the united action of Church of England people in Jamaica .* They claimed the exclusive use of the building erected, and yet had no regu- lar minister. The Presbyterians employed the Rev. John Hubbard, who was ordained in 1700, and was strongly
*Doc. Hist., III, 244.
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opposed to Church of England worship, to hold service in the Church, and he was called to be Rector in February 1702, by the vestry.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts had resolved not to obtrude the Episcopal service upon the Colonists against their wishes. They did not therefore appoint missionaries until applications were made by the Colonists for ministers of the Church of England, nor until they were assured that adequate means would be provided for their comfort and support.
As soon as the formation of the Society was known, applications for missionaries were received from various parts of America. It became their duty to send Episcopal clergymen to the Colonies. They felt an awful responsi- bility resting upon them. Learning, diligence, piety, zeal and discretion were deemed indispensable qualifications in these missionaries. They determined therefore that none should be employed unless they produced satisfactory tes- timonials of their "temper and prudence, their learning and sober conversation, their zeal for the Christian religion, their affection to the Government, and conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England," and as an additional security their "testimonials were to be signed by their respective diocesans."
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was spe- cially charged with the religious instruction of the British Colonies in America and the West Indies, while the Society for Promoting of Christian Knowledge provided for the spiritual wants of England and other parts of the British Empire.
III PERIOD OF THE COLONIAL MISSIONARIES-1700-1770
MA
SEMPER
EADEM
Queen's Arms
REV. THOMAS POYER.
REV. JAMES HONEYMAN.
REV. THOMAS BRAY.
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1533312
CHAPTER III. The Needs of the American Colonies, and the Response to Their Call.
The English Colonies in America at the close of the sev- enteenth century showed the sad effects of the political and religious dissensions of Great Britain. But there was wise forethought of the religious needs of the Colonies, and one of the first far-reaching efforts to check and re- move from them the prevailing infidelity and immorality was the founding at Oxford of two fellowships between 1660 and 1670. These were to be held by persons in holy orders "who should be willing to take upon them the care of souls in foreign plantations."
In the same period the Boyle lectureship was established, to show to all succeeding generations the great duty of converting infidels to the faith of Christ.
By the Bishop of London Commissary Blair was sent to Virginia in 1685, and Dr. Thomas Bray to Maryland in 1700. Dr. Blair established the College of William and Mary, and Dr. Bray originated two societies which he suc- ceeded by great energy and wisdom in establishing before he set sail, March, 1700, for America. These were the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Dr. Bray enlisted many great names in the English Church, both of the laity and clergy in the formation of the latter Society, which was to supply missionaries to Amer-
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ica and many other parts of the world. It was duly incor- porated and held its first meeting in June, 1701, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as President. Bishops Bever- idge, Archbishops Wake and Sharp, Bishops Gibson and Berkeley, who were some of its distinguished supporters, evoked by their appeals and personal influence funds from every quarter. It was time to reform the English Colonies in America, in which Bishop Berkeley declared, twenty- five years later, there was but little sense of religion and a most notorious corruption of manners.
There were in all North America but 50 clergy and 43,800 members of the Church of England. In the Prov- ince of New York there were 30,000 souls, of whom about 1,200 attended church and 450 were communicants at the services.
If the testimony of a violent opposer of the Church of England as to the state of the Colonies is of any added value, we may recall what Revd. Cotton Mather said of one of the New England Colonies in 1695, "a Colluvies of Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Anti-Sabbatarians, Armenians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters and everything but Roman Catholics and true Christians, bona terra mala gens, a good land, but a bad lot."
Such were the conditions to which the missionaries of the Venerable Society addressed themselves at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century. They were fit men for self-denying work. Some of them itinerated, some settled down in districts and established missions around them, as at the present day.
Six of these missionaries in the first five years were sent to the Province of New York, where the Legislature had already authorized an appointment of this number of min-
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isters. New York was selected for the first missions at the suggestion of Mr. Vesey, who had been a lay reader of services in Hempstead in 1695, and had gone to England for ordination.
Very important to the success of the movement had been the founding of Trinity Church in New York City in 1696. Its endowment by Queen Anne with the Church farm, which was composed of the Annetje Jans and the Duke's farm, and subsequently became of such immense value in the heart of the City of New York, was the stay afterwards of many a Church of England organization besides the Churches of Queens County, Grace Church in Jamaica, St. George's in Flushing, St. James' in Newtown, and St. George's of Hempstead, which are all linked with the memory of its benefactions and endowments.
The first specific local appointment by the Society was made to Jamaica, Long Island, March 20, 1702, at the written request of prominent churchmen in Jamaica, en- dorsed by others in New York City.
Of the seven men who came to Jamaica and other towns from the Society before 1704, Messrs. Gordon, Keith, Bar- tow, Honeyman, and Urquehart, Mckenzie, and Muirson, Lord Cornbury, in 1705, wrote concerning their charac- ters and labors: "They have behaved themselves with great zeal, exemplary piety and unwearied diligence in discharge of their duty in their several parishes."
Col. Heathecote, afterwards the most distinguished citi- zen of New York as Mayor, Vestryman of Trinity Church, Commander of the Colonial forces, and Receiver General of the Customs in North America, reported the same year to the Society:
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"I must do all the gentlemen that justice, which you have sent to this province, as to declare that a better clergy were never in any place, there being not one among them that has the least blame or blemish as to his life or con- versation."
The Church was rooted strongly in the places where it had been planted by the Society, but so great was the op- position, political and sectarian, to her progress that even as late as 1745, New York Colony had but 22 Episcopal Churches, while there was but one Episcopal Church in Boston and one in Philadelphia.
Yet the missionaries of the Society sought in an orderly way to establish and uphold a conservative piety. There was a convention of the Anglican Church in New York, about 1705, which was called by Governor Nichols of Vir- ginia at the request of Dr. Bray, Commissary. It was composed of seven ministers only; one of them, Rev. John Bartow, represented Queens County. The convention was continued in session for a week, and devised measures for the extension of the Gospel by Episcopal services. It was proposed that a Suffragan Bishop be sent out from England, and the convention prepared and sent to England a statement of the necessity of this measure. The Lord Bishop of London, in 1707, wrote in approval, giving his reasons for the appointment of a Suffragan instead of an absolute Bishop. But this wise proposal from America was treated with indifference by those in political power, who only could put in effect the action of the Church authorities.
There was, however, an increased interest manifested after the convention by the churchmen of New York. Robert Livingstone, in 1703, sent a memorial to the
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Society, asking for the appointment of six men of youth, learning and orthodoxy to go as missionaries to the Indians of New York, one to each of the Five Nations, and one to the River Indians.
They took forethought also for education. It was pro- posed in 1703 to found a College. Col. Morris, Col. Heathecote, and Governor Cornbury were much inter- ested in the subject, and proposed that the farm of 32 acres belonging to Trinity Church, which rented for only £36 per annum, be granted to the Society for this purpose. This movement culminated afterward in the founding of Kings, now Columbia University.
The opposition to the Church of England culminated in Connecticut, when the standard works on English services were sent over by the Society for the Propagation of Chris- tian Knowledge to that Colony.
Eight hundred volumes of these works were there dis- tributed. They awakened the students and officers of the only College in that Colony. They were eagerly read by the students of Yale. The President, Dr. Cutler, two of the tutors, Messrs. Johnson and Brown, in consequence of this enlightenment, abandoned their support from the College and sought ordination in England.
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CHAPTER IV. The Mission of the Reverend Patrick Gordon to Grace Church.
The names of two clergymen who applied to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for appointment to the missionary work in America at the meeting in London on March 20, 1702, were George Keith and Patrick Gordon.
Before the Society proceeded to appoint missionaries to particular places they resolved "to send a travelling mis- sionary or preacher who should travel over and preach in the several governments on the Continents of British America." By this means they hoped they should awaken the people into a sense of the duties of religion. Rev. George Keith, who had formerly resided in Pennsylvania, was selected to be the itinerant missionary through the continent with a yearly allowance of £200. Dr. Bray re- ported that the Lord Bishop of London had appointed Mr. Patrick Gordon a missionary to New York, and the Society resolved "to make up the Queen's Bounty money £50 per. annum, the first year and continue the same or more yearly as they shall see fitt according to the good behavior of the said Mr. Gordon." At the same meeting it was proposed, after this action upon Mr. Gordon's appointment by the Bishop of London, to send another missionary, Mr. John Forsseeil, to Staten Island.
At their next meeting, March 27, 1702, it was ordered that the Treasurers "do pay to Mr. Gordon the summ of £30, by way of advance out of his allowance from this Society."
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So far the effort of this Scotch clergyman to accomplish a purpose worthy of his devotion seemed successful. But in the Society's records of a meeting three weeks after, April 17th, it is stated that a letter from Mr. Gordon was read. It is found in the volume of Letters of the S. P. G., Vol. I, III, April 17, 1702, and throws much light on a character of which little has been known.
"Very Reverend :
I am sorry to tell you that my voyage is to be marred at last, the York money is not to come. It is true Dr. Fall expects it every Post and it may possibly be a month before it comes. Had I not depended on it, I might have had money elsewhere, which I cannot now. Most certain it is, I can't go without it, and if it is not advanced by you (or) a member of the Corporation, I must give security for the two pounds already received, and lay aside thoughts of New York notwithstanding great charges already in fitting out and the small loss of time. I therefore desire that you'l lay this matter before the corporation, upon hearing of which I am persuaded they'l empower one of their number to make a present advance.
"I might likewise complain of the Dilatory methods that are taken in advancing the Queens Bounty, notwithstanding I gott my Lord of London's letter to Mr. Sturt, and though he doubts of the money after the coronation, yet he gives me but small hopes of advancing it sometime next week. It is six to one if he does it, notwithstanding I have offered him a fair consideration. This is the melancholy prospect of my affairs. It lyes in the breast of the corporation to give them another face, and I hope they will do it. I'll wait for you at St. Cecilia's Coffee House, where I shall be glad to see you as soon as the meeting is over.
P. GORDON.
To the Very Reverend Dr. Bray.
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After hearing this letter the Society "ordered" that the said Mr. Gordon "do immediately attend the Society."
Mr. Gordon was called in and heard as to the subject of the letter and then withdrew. The Society then took ac- tion and resolved "that forasmuch as it does appear to this Society that the said Mr. Gordon is in danger of losing his passage to the West Indies for want of twenty pounds, the Queen's Bounty money, as also of fifty pounds more which was to have been advanced to him on account of his voyage by some gentlemen at York, this Society for the aforesaid reasons will immediately pay him the said sum of fifty pounds on condition that the said Mr. Gordon do first procure sufficient security, that the said summe of fifty pounds shall be repaid within 2 months after the loan of it. And it is hereby further declared that a promise from his Grace, the Lord Archbishop of York, for the speedy payment of the same shall be understood to be sufficient security. The Committee reported also on Mr. Gordon's request that he might be furnished with books, and it was ordered that the summe of ten pounds be allowed the said Mr. Gordon, to be laid out in such books as are proper for him on this occasion."*
The first meeting of the Society after receiving the Royal Charter from King William III was held on Friday, June 27, 1701, in the library of the Archbishop of York. The Bishops of London, the Bishop of Bangor, the Bishop of Chichester and the Bishop of Gloucester, with noted clergymen and laymen, among whom are named Dr. White Kennett, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough; Dr. Stanhope, Dr. Bray, Sir John Chardin, Sir Richard Black-
*Original Records of the S. P. G., in London.
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more, Sir George Wheeler and Sergeant Hook. Mr. Mel- moth and Mr. Hodges were appointed Treasurers and Mr. John Chamberlane Secretary. Every month distinguished men were elected into the Society, and they became active in soliciting subscriptions to aid the Society's objects, especially from eminent bankers of the city of London, who traded in the plantations of North America.
Meetings were held every month, and on the 19th of September, 1701, a memorial was read from Col. Morris on the sad state of religion in the Colonies of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
A similar account by Col. Dudley, Governor of New England, of the English plantations of North America was presented and read. In this it was stated that in New York there were 25,000 souls in twenty-five towns, in which there were about five Church of England ministers in fifteen English towns. Whatever others were to be found were Dutch and English Dissenters.
Mr. George Keith gave an account of the state of Quakerdom in North America, and described the qualifi- cations that a North American missionary should possess, who should be sent out by the Society in the first year of its existence.
"Such as go over into those parts for the propagation of the Gospel should be men of solidity and good experience, as well as otherwise qualified with good learning, and good natural parts, and especially exemplary in piety, and of a discreet zeal, humble and meek, able to endure the toil and fatigue they must expect to go through, both in mind and body, not raw young men, nor yet very old, whose Godly zeal to propagate true Christianity in life should
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be the great motive; for people generally of those parts are very sharp and observant, to notice both what is good or bad in those who converse among them."
As it took three months to make the voyage to England, it could not have been long after this, that the Society received the petition of the Church of England people in Jamaica, for a missionary, and his support. Col. Morris writes that Mr. Gordon received the invitation of some of the best men in his parish to go there, and the Society had, at his appointment, specially designated him as missionary to Nassau Island, the eastern part of which was occupied by the townships of Jamaica, Flushing and Newtown, from which the call for a missionary had come to the Society.
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