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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01792 3506
GENEALOGY 974.5 T979RH
RHODE ISLAND
EPISCOPALIANS
1635 - 1953
DUDLEY TYNG Ph. D.
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Rhode Island Episcopalians
1635-1953
DUDLEY TYNG, Ph.D.
Dedicated to the Memory of
James De Wolf Perry, Jr.
Bishop of Rhode Island 1911 - 1946
LITTLE RHODY PRESS -
PROVIDENCE, R. I.
Foreword
I am glad to commend this book to the Church people of Rhode Island. The Reverend Dr. Tyng, a man of scholarly taste and training, has given many years of faithful service to this Diocese, and has devoted much time in preparing the material in this volume. It makes a distinct contribution to the history of the Diocese, and I am grateful to him for his work.
G.G. Bennett
Bishop of Rhode Island
Preface
A history of the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island would seem to be very much in order. None such really exists.
In Field's History of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations there is in the second volume, a series of sketches of the growth of the various bodies of Christians in Rhode Island, by the Rev. Daniel Goodwin, D.D., a well-known scholar in the subject. A watered-down version of this appears in the W.P.A. volume on Rhode Island, continued very briefly to the near present. Dr. Goodwin's sketch runs only to 1900.
A three-volume account of the Church in Rhode Island, in many of its earlier features, is contained in Updike's History of the Narragansett Church, edited in 1892 by Dr. Goodwin and reissued by the generosity of Mr. Harold Brown of Newport. Mason's Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, is also a voluminous and valuable account, terminating long ago. Bishop Clark's Reminiscences, John Seeley Stone's Memoir of Bishop Griswold and Bachelder's History of the Eastern Diocese supply much material up to the time of the Civil War. All these works are now out of print and only semi-accessible. This applies also to Professor Henry B. Huntington's Centennial History of Grace Church, Providence, issued in 1931, an interesting account of its financial struggles and of the eminent men who have guided that great parish on its upward way.
Though I have made use of these works, and of others, my main sources have been the Diocesan Journals from 1790 on. But for the enormous cost of present day publication this little book could have been much larger and the treatment of important matters and men less meager. The growth of the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island in each of its main areas merits as much compass as is here given to them all.
My thanks are due to Bishops Bennett and Higgins for their interest and help in the work, and to the Rev. Anthony R. Parshley, Litt. D., lately Archdeacon of the Diocese, for the original stimulation to write.
DUDLEY TYNG
Greenville, Rhode Island Epiphany, 1954
CHAPTER I.
Introduction
The Church in Rhode Island 11 1698 to 1790
THE OLD NARRAGANSETT CHURCH
About the year 1700 one of the redoubtable Doctors Mather, of Boston and witchcraft fame, wrote thus about religion in Rhode Island: "It has been a Colluvies of Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Antisabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, everything in the world but Roman Catholics and true Christians." (i.e. Congregationalists ). If the Churchmen in Rhode Island had then been visible from Puritan Boston, they, doubtless, would have been included in this burst of damnatory disdain.
Trinity Church, Newport, nevertheless, was already in existence, while more than sixty years before a Church of England clergyman, of Puritan leanings, the Reverend William Blackstone (or Blaxton) had settled and ministered near the present village of Lonsdale. Blackstone, who had gladly left behind the "Lords Bishops" in England, misliked equally the 'Lords Brethren" who crowded upon him at his extensive farm in old Bos- ton. With the sale of his holdings there, he purchased from the Indians a large tract of land in what was then Rehoboth, but is now Cumberland, Rhode Island. Blackstone made the arduous journey through the wilder- ness in 1635, the year before Roger Williams landed in Providence at the site of the monument located across the street from the Cathedral of St. John. Blackstone built a comfortable house on "Study Hill", which looked out westward on the clear waters of the splashing river named after him. Besides his books, a large library for those days, which he transported on the backs of oxen from Boston, he brought the Prayer Book, apple growing and cattle raising to Rhode Island.
It seems likely that Blackstone at a later time preached and adminis- tered the sacraments in Providence. Certainly he travelled occasionally to South County to the plantation home of the Smiths, riding his gray bull through meadows and primitive forest. The traditional witness to his religious activities nearer home is the "Catholic Oak", which stood for many decades near the junction of Broad and Blackstone Streets in Lonsdale. Under this tree Blackstone is supposed to have preached to whatever Indians and white men he could gather. Nearly two centuries later an Episcopal missionary in that area writes of preaching at the "Oak" to five hundred people-very likely a generous clerical overestimate. In King Philip's War, after Blackstone's death, his house was burned to the ground, and with it, doubtless, valuable historical papers. "Study Hill" reverted to its original wilderness.
It was nearly a generation after Blackstone's death in 1675 before the voice of Episcopacy was once more heard in the land. In the meantime, the island of Rhode Island had become prosperous farming country and Newport quite a town. Roger Williams, who once paddled his canoe from Providence to Newport to have an argument with the Quakers there, noted how, in a few years, the trees had largely disappeared. A little later, when population grew faster than farming subsistence, men took to the sea, and Newport become a harbor of renown.
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This metropolis of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was visited before 1698 by Sir Francis Nicholson, royal governor or lieuten- ant governor, at various times, in several of the Colonies. He noted with concern that there were no gatherings for worship in Newport according to the forms of the Church of England. So he became "the original founder and principal patron of Trinity Church." He was ably supported by Gabriel Bernon, a Huguenot refugee from Louis Fourteenth's Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes. Pierre Ayrault, a French Protestant phys- ician, also a refugee, was another prominent supporter, together with William Brinley and Robert Gardiner, or Gardner. In Trinity's church- yard is the inscription: "Here lieth the body of Robert Gardner Esq., who was one of the First promoters of the Church on this place."
The first minister of this new congregation was the Reverend John Lockyer, who remained several years and built the original Trinity Church. He says of it: "The place wherein we meet to worship is finished on the outside, all but the steeple. The inside is pewed well, but not beautified." In 1725, with the building of the present Trinity Church, the old edifice, reportedly, was ferried across the Bay to the Cowesett shore, where it was to be for a number of years, a Chapel of Ease for sundry neighboring Churchmen. The real growth of the parish begins with the ministry from 1704 to 1750 of James Honeyman, who also had a hand in founding St. Paul's, Narragansett, in 1707, as well as St. Michael's, Bristol, in 1720, and St. John's, Providence, in 1722. In his forty-six years Honeyman, with Lockyer before him, baptized 1,579 persons. By 1740 Trinity Parish, with its new building, had become as important as any in the Colonies. The inscription on Honeyman's tombstone describes him as a man "with the arm of charity embracing all sincere followers of Christ." Many Quakers and Baptists were gathered into the Church during his Ministry.
A frequent preacher at Trinity during his three years in America was the famous philosopher, Dean Berkeley, later Bishop of Cloyne, whose mansion, Whitehall, is now a historical monument in Middletown.
Prominent among the laity of the congregation was Nathaniel Kay, long a Collector of the King's Customs. He was a generous benefactor of Trinity, as well as of the Narragansett Church and St. Michael's, Bristol. But for the endowments, principally of land, which he gave, it may well be doubted whether any of these parishes would have risen again, at least so soon, after the Revolution. Kay Chapel of Trinity Church and Kay Street in Newport commemorate this Christian benefactor.
After Honeyman's death in 1750 the parish flourished under various ministers. For instance, the Reverend Marmaduke Brown reported that the Christmas communions of 1771 were over two hundred. Soon, how- ever, the Revolution was on, and most of the congregation fled from Newport at the approach of the British. Redcoats now filled the pews until the British evacuation to other areas. The church was seldom opened, at least for Episcopal services, for some years.
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St. Paul's, Kingstown, originally located on McSparran Hill five miles to the south of Wickford, came into being with the arrival of the Reverend Christopher Bridge in 1706. In 1707 the old Narragansett Church was built and removed in 1800 to more populous Wickford. Previous to these dates a number of Church families had settled in plantations in that relatively fertile section of the State. Such were the Richard Smiths at whose house Blackstone held services long before 1675.
After several short and widely-spaced incumbencies, the doughty James McSparran arrived in 1721. He planted the parish on firm founda- tions. For thirty-six years he travelled the South County enduring, he said, "labors and toils inexpressible." The planters who constituted his congregation were "a people exceptionally cultured, well-to-do, hospitable to a proverb, proud of their pastor, loyal to their Church and secure in the conviction that to be a Narragansett Planter, with large estates and troops of slaves, was a sufficient patent of aristocracy."
Gabriel Bernon, who helped to found Trinity, Newport, and St. John's, Providence, was also one of the laity of the early days. Others were Daniel Updike, attorney-general of the Colony; Doctor Silvester Gardiner, after whom Gardiner, Maine, was named, and Moses Lippet, ancestor of the well-known textile family of Rhode Island. Gilbert Stuart also, the noted painter, was born and baptized in Kingstown at that time. McSparran's name was to be a household word in South County for over a century.
After a three-year vacancy, the Reverend Samuel Fayerweather suc- ceeded McSparran. He found the Church closed and the congregation scattered. However, in spite of various eccentricities, he managed to build the parish up again. Thus he fixed the date of his wedding for six o'clock on a cold winter morning in heatless Trinity, Newport. As soon as the ceremony was over he stood up and preached a sermon to the congrega- tion. About 1774, when the majority of his congregation desired to have the prayers for the King and royal family omitted from the service, Fayerweather, true to his ordination oath of allegiance, refused. As a result the church once more was closed. For a while it was even used as a barracks by the Continental soldiery watching the British in Newport. For more than a generation the Narragansett parish was to languish, even after the removal of the church to the new center of population in Wickford.
St. Michael's, Bristol, was founded in 1720, when the town was still a part of Massachusetts. As a result, there was trouble over Church taxes. At one time twelve members of St. Michael's were in jail for refusing to pay their assessments toward the support of the established Congrega- tional Church. Finally, with legislative permission, Bristol Town Meeting decided that the taxes levied on Churchmen should go to their own Church. In 1746, when the town was ceded to unestablished Rhode Island, Church taxes, of course, vanished.
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After a short stay by the Reverend James Orem, John Usher, a gradu- ate of Harvard, was sent out in 1723 by the S. P. G., or Society for the Propogation of the Gospel, to be the minister at St. Michael's. Usher proved to be the right man. He conciliated the Puritans and built up the Church, as his son did again after the Revolution. In 1731 galleries were added to accommodate the increased numbers, and Nathaniel Kay's farm was deeded to the church. The proceeds from its later sale formed a part of the considerable endowment which St. Michael's now enjoys.
In his long pastorate of fifty-two years John Usher baptized 713 per- sons and officiated at 274 funerals and 185 weddings. He died on April 30, 1775, just before the woes of the Revolution were to break over the parish. In May, 1778, after three years of vacancy, the church building was burned down by a British raiding party from Newport. Perhaps it was mistaken for another Baptist church, like the one set afire in the neighboring town of Warren.
The latest Colonial parish was King's Church, Providence, now St. John's, founded in 1722. At this time Providence was little more than a village strung north and south along the present Main and Benefit Streets. Along South Main Street was the harbor. North of this was the "Cove". A shipyard was located at the foot of the present Smith Street. Cows swam the river to pasture in the meadows where now is the down- town business district. As late as July, 1704, the Town Meeting forbade the erection of more wharves, so that the cattle should have room to clamber up and down the bank! By 1722, however, merchants were crowding the "planters" into the back country.
It was "the want of a missionary at a town called Providence," which troubled Honeyman when he journeyed there from Newport. "Through want of instruction the people are becoming quite rude, and void of all knowledge in religion." He added, however, that the inhabitants "were of a good teachable disposition." In 1722 he preached in the open air to the largest congregation he had ever witnessed in America.
Gabriel Bernon, also, who had been a Church pioneer in Newport and Narragansett, wrote about this time to McSparran about the possi- bility of settling "in our town of Providence one learned Minister of good condition-an old England gentleman-minister." In the meantime, spurred on by Honeyman, Church people in Providence set to work to raise money for a church edifice. When 770 pounds had been gathered. the building was started on St. Barnabas Day, June 11, 1722. This served the parish until 1810, when the present church was erected. For its minis- ter the S. P. G. transferred the Reverend Samuel Pigot from Stratford, Connecticut. Pigot's wife, who happened to be heiress to considerable lands in the town of Warwick, built there a house in the midst of the primitive forest. From this then formidable distance Pigot served the parish for four years before going elsewhere.
Another of the early rectors of St. John's was the colorful John Checkley. As publisher and bookseller in Boston he had long kept up a
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running warfare with the Puritans, with the result that his numerous enemies were able to prevent the ordination which he sought on two different trips to England. A third hazardous voyage, in his sixtieth year, however, brought success. In 1739 the Bishop of Exeter gave him Orders. For the next fifteen years Checkley worked at St. John's, where his ardor in controversy and his knowledge of the Narragansett Indian dialect made him conspicuous. He died in harness at seventy-five.
Thereupon John Graves, vicar of Clapham in England, was sent out by the S. P. G. to fill Checkley's place. He labored at St. John's for twenty years, until his refusal to omit the prayers for the King led to the same result as with Fayerweather at Kingstown. Feeling against Graves was so strong that his attempts to resume his parish after the Revolution came to naught.
As we look back over the colonial period, it becomes clear what a vital part the S. P. G. played in the Church of England life in Rhode Island, as well as in the Colonies generally. Over the years, the S. P. G. grants in aid toward the salaries of its missionaries in Rhode Island totaled the then enormous sum of twenty thousand pounds. St. John's, Providence, alone received about four thousand pounds, equivalent, at the present value of the dollar, to $200,000. This "Venerable Society," which in 1951 celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, thus nourished the work here, not only with money, but with men of high calibre, who were recruited partly in England and partly in the Colonies.
II
If the Revolutionary War was a heavy blow to the Church of England folk in most of the Colonies, in Rhode Island it was a disaster. St. Michael's, Bristol was in ashes. St. Paul's, Narragansett, was closed, as was St. John's, Providence. The congregation of Trinity, Newport, was much reduced and greatly divided. A Six-Principle Baptist minister occupied the building for several years.
However, the clouds slowly began to lift. St. Michael's, Bristol, was rebuilt and John Usher, a son of the pre-Revolutionary rector, officiated with acceptance as a lay reader. In 1793 he was ordained by Bishop Seabury of Connecticut, who had been invited by clergy and laity to be Bishop likewise in Rhode Island. St. Paul's, Narragansett, had intermit- tent rectorships. Trinity, Newport, and St. John's, Providence, came to good fortune with outstanding rectors.
It was William Smith, who had officiated for three years at Narra- gansett before going to Newport, and Moses Badger, for some years rector of St. John's, who launched the Diocese of Rhode Island on its career. On November 18, 1790, these two clergymen, with five laymen,
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met at Newport, and, after verifying the lay credentials, proceeded to organize the first Diocesan Convention. The lay delegates were John Handy and Robert M. Auchmuty of Newport, Jeremiah F. Jenkins and John Mumford of Providence, and John Usher of Bristol. Moses Badger was elected President of the Convention and Robert Auchmuty of New- port the Secretary. The two clergymen and John Usher were duly chosen to be the Standing Committee, or the governing body, in the absence of a bishop, of the new diccese. Further, the Convention agreed to accept and follow the Canons of the General Church, as adopted by the Gen- eral Convention held in Philadelphia between September 29 and October 26, 1789, as well as the Prayer Book then and there revised. It also voted that "the Church of this State be immediately united under a Bishop," and that "the Right Rev'd Father in God, Samuel Seabury D. D., Bishop of Connecticut, be and is hereby declared Bishop of the Church of this State." Seabury accepted this additional duty and was present at the Conventions of 1793 and 1795, ordaining at that of 1793 John Usher of Bristol to the priesthood. At the Convention of 1792 the Bishop and Convention delegates from Connecticut were formally requested also to represent Rhode Island at the General Convention of that year in New York. Sending a delegation to such a distance from feeble Rhode Island seemed impossible!
After Seabury's death in 1796, Rhode Island looked to Massachusetts for Episcopal supervision. The Right Reverend Edward Bass, who was Bishop there, as well as rector of St. Paul's, Newburyport, was requested by the Convention of 1798 to be Bishop also in Rhode Island. Bishop Bass accepted, but exercised little jurisdiction, attending but one Convention in five years. His successor in Massachusetts, Samuel Parker, died too soon after his consecration in 1804 to become legally attached to Rhode Island. In fact, Convention did not meet between 1802 and 1806.
In this last year new faces, at least among the clergy, appeared at Convention. An old face was that of the Reverend Theodore Dehon of Newport, who in eight years had reunited Trinity Parish and brought it again to pre-Revolutionary prosperity. New was that of the Reverend Alexander Viets Griswold, rector for two years at Bristol, and destined a few years later to be Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, which included all New England outside of the strong Diocese of Connecticut. New also was Nathan Bourne Crocker, who was to be rector of St. John's, Provi- dence, for two generations to come. Its important business was to elect Benjamin Moore, assistant bishop of New York, to be Bishop also in Rhode Island. This invitation Bishop Moore declined.
Thus the quest for a bishop went on for another five years, until the delegates from the four States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire united to form an "Eastern Diocese." In the mean- time the Church in Rhode Island progressed steadily. Trinity, Newport, continued to flourish under Dehon, and even had for several years an assistant minister, the Reverend John Ward. St. Michael's, Bristol, had big congregations and had to be enlarged, although the number of communicants rose only from twenty-five to forty in seven years. The
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conditions which there led three times in twenty years to great revivals, with a hundred conversions and confirmations at each date, had not yet matured. St. John's, Providence, grew in like fashion. The old wooden church was torn down to make way for a new one of stone, which, with additions and renovations, forms the present Cathedral of St. John. Nevertheless, congregations continued far to outnumber listed communi- cants. By 1811 the number of these last in the whole State was not more than two hundred, many of them not yet confirmed.
While the legal machinery for establishing the Eastern Diocese by the formal consent of its constituent parts was in process. the clergy con- cerned and some of the laity began to look for a man suited to the office of bishop of such a See. The office called for a man of physical, mental and spiritual vigor, young and hardy enough to run a parish as well as so far-flung a Diocese. Travel was slow and difficult, and no special funds for the support of a bishop existed.
Small wonder, then, that Dr. Gardiner of Trinity Church, Boston, felt unable, when approached, to consider the office. Theodore Dehon of Newport was likewise unwilling. Evidently his heart was already set on the South, whither, shortly after the election, he went as rector of St. John's, Charleston, South Carolina. He became bishop of that State almost immediately thereafter, but died in 1817, at the age of only forty-one.
So difficult seemed the search that even Dudley Atkins Tyng, a lawyer of Newburyport, Massachusetts, was asked by several of the clergy of that diocese to take Orders with the idea of later consecration to the episcopate. Judge Tyng, however, declined. Thus the finger of destiny slowly pointed to Griswold of Bristol. He was only forty-four, vigorous, eloquent, and of good repute in both Connecticut and Rhode Island, his two fields of labor. So it came to pass that, when Griswold arrived as a delegate to the initial Convention of the New Eastern Diocese in 1810, he suddenly discovered that he was the informal choice of practically all present. He protested his inability and unworthiness, but was elected almost unanimously. After pondering the matter all summer he decided to accept.
The nearest possible date for Consecration was at the General Con- vention to be held on May 21, 1811, in New Haven, when it was hoped that the necessary three bishops would be present. Such, however, was not the case. Only William White of Pennsylvania, Presiding Bishop by virtue of seniority, and Abraham Jarvis of Connecticut were on hand. Therefore, the consecration was adjourned to New York City, where Bishop Provoost, crippled by a paralytic stroke, was able to assist in the laying on of hands. There, on May 29, 1811, John Henry Hobart and Alexander Viets Griswold were consecrated the eleventh and twelfth bishops in America of the Apostolic Succession. In his Autobiography circulated much later, Griswold expresses his surprise that a younger man chosen only to be assistant bishop in New York, should thus be made senior in succession to an older man elected to be diocesan bishop. Griswold accepts it as a rebuke of his own "proud heart," and assumes
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that White did so intentionally, desiring Hobart, in due time, to be his successor in the Presiding Bishopric. It may well be that White estimated the brilliant New Yorker more highly than the relatively obscure presbyter from Bristol, Rhode Island. If such was White's intention, rather than accident, history ruled otherwise. Hobart wore himself out by the age of fifty-five. In nineteen years he had transformed the Diocese of New York from a small cluster of parishes fairly close to the City into a vigorous and far-flung unit. When, six years after Hobart's death, White finally passed to his reward, at the age of eighty-eight, Griswold, then seventy, became his successor by seniority in the Presiding Bishop's office.
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