USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > A history of Grace Church in Providence, Rhode Island, 1829-1929 > Part 17
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Mr. Robinette resigned on October 15, 1923, and Mr. Hemin- way left in September, 1924, to take the chaplaincy of St. George's School in Middletown. Dr. Sturges1 continued without any regular assistant throughout that fall and winter, until the coming of the Rev. Robert R. Carmichael from Clinton, Massachusetts, just after Easter, 1925.
The parish suffered grievous loss in this rectorship by the death of two of the most devoted and effective workers among its parish- ioners. On September 1, 1922, died Albert Louis Miller, for a quarter of a century a faithful member of the choir, prominent as a leader in various societies for boys and men, and for many years
1 Brown University conferred the degree of D.D. on Mr. Sturges in June, 1921, in the following terms:
"Philemon Fowler Sturges: humane theologian and genial friend, rector of a church that declines to retreat, who amid the roar of the city streets translates for us the quiet message of Galilee and makes Christ credible to men."
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superintendent of the Sunday School. A tablet to his memory has been placed on the west wall of the church. Of him Mr. Gardner wrote in the report of January, 1923, "He was a busy man and almost every hour that could be taken from his business was devoted to the service of Grace Church in one way or another. His memory will long be cherished by hundreds of men and women who have profited by his leadership."
Mrs. John H. Cady died on All Saints' Day, 1922. As the weekly calendar records: "Her long and splendid service as the President of the Grace Church Missionary Society and then of the Woman's Auxiliary, her buoyant devotion and love to all the work and worship of this parish through a long life of loyalty and service remain a living power in the common fellowship of our communion." To her memory also a fitting tablet has been erected on the east wall.
The personnel of the Vestry changed little in this decade. Henry V. A. Joslin, in the fall of 1916, through failing health felt obliged to resign as Secretary of the Corporation and Clerk of the Vestry after eleven years of notably efficient service. He continued as vestryman until his death in 1918, when he was succeeded by Frank Tourtellot Easton, a prominent lawyer in the city. Henry Barrett Huntington was elected Secretary to succeed Mr. Joslin. The resignation of Frank P. Comstock, as Treasurer, and vestry- man in May, 1924, resulted in several changes in the conduct of that office. An arrangement was made with the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company to take over the details of receiving and disbursing the money and of bookkeeping, including a careful annual audit. Mr. Arthur Livingston Kelley, son of the former Junior Warden and himself a vestryman of many years standing, was elected Treasurer. At his request the Vestry readily adopted the business-like practice of having the Treasurer suitably bonded by a reliable company at the expense of the Corporation. In January, 1925, Mr. John Prescott Farnsworth was elected to fill the vacancy in the Vestry. At the next annual meeting of the Vestry, he was placed on the important Committee on Repairs of which Mr. Carr became chairman. Mr. Babcock at that time retired from this committee, after twenty-eight years as one of its most active members. The Vestry passed a resolution of high praise and warm appreciation of the faithful services he had rendered as member and chairman.
On February 10, 1920, the Vestry met at the residence of Mr. Viall, the Junior Warden, at 79 Waterman Street. So far as can
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be learned this was the first meeting in a private house since the meeting in 1887 at 10 Brown Street,-the present Bishop's House,- as a house-warming for Dr. Greer. The Vestry thought so well of such a meeting, where all the surroundings were conducive to informal discussion and leisurely consideration of plans and principles, that it has since frequently followed the precedent then established, especially by many memorable meetings at the Rectory. It was at the first of these in May, 1920, that the sale of Pinewood Farm was arranged for. The house had recently been destroyed by fire and the amount received from insurance, from the sale of pine trees, and finally from the land, gave the Church a very satisfactory profit on the original gift and formed a most useful fund of nearly $10,000, the income of which has been used for the summer outings provided by the Church. An- other meeting at the Rectory, which none of the Vestry present is likely to forget, was that of January 15, 1926, at which was signed the testimonial of Philemon Fowler Sturges, Jr., as candidate for holy orders from Grace Church.
In 1926 the Vestry report was written by Dr. Blumer in an especially lively and interesting fashion, though without the authority which the words of Mr. Gardner had come to possess as the result of his experience of at least twenty-five years in the writing of these reports and of his position as Senior Warden.
The attention given to the church edifice at the time of building the parish house was supposed to make changes and extensive repairs unlikely. Unfortunately, however, it was discovered in the spring of 1922 that the ceiling over the nave was loose in several places and that a serious accident might easily take place. The whole ceiling was accordingly covered with acoustic felt, the clerestory walls and windows repaired, and the walls redecorated to conform to the coloring of the new chancel, thus adding to the harmony and dignity of the edifice. These repairs, costing almost $20,000, were most carefully supervised by Mr. Babcock, who gave up his plans for the summer to be constantly on hand. They, of course, necessitated closing the church through the summer so that the congregation accepted the hospitality of All Saints' Church until the last of October.
Certain memorials besides the window to Deaconess von Brockdorff are of Dr. Sturges's rectorship. Besides the tablets to Albert L. Miller and Mary T. Cady already spoken of, tablets were erected in memory of Stephen Brownell, a member of the Vestry for over forty years, and of Mrs. Stephen O. Metcalf,
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prominent both in the community and the Church and President of the Colonial Dames of Rhode Island. Over the stall which he occupied when a tenor soloist in the choir, an inscribed tablet in memory of Frederick Alonzo Harmon, 2ª, was unveiled in November, 1920.
The greatest acquisition in these years, and one of the most worthy memorials in the Church, though seldom thought of as a memorial by most of the congregation, was the noble chancel organ, made by Casevant Fréres of Saint Hyacinthe, Canada, which was dedicated on October 7, 1923. This well-nigh perfect instrument, adding so greatly to the richness of the services and the effectiveness of the music, was given in memory of Arthur L. Kelley, the late Junior Warden, by his widow, Mrs. Octavius T. Howe, and his son, Mr. A. Livingston Kelley, the present Treasurer.
With the approval of the Vestry, Mrs. Robert Gammell gave, in memory of Bishop Greer, a handsome processional cross of heavily carved wood, which was dedicated on All Saints' Day, 1920. This cross was made by Irving and Casson of Boston from designs by J. Howard Adams, an active member of the Corporation, whose early death a few years later was a great loss to the parish he deeply loved. The design was based on an old French processional cross. On one face the figure of Christ Enthroned is in the center and at the ends of the four arms are symbols representing Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and Trinity. On the other face, the center bears the seal of the Diocese of Rhode Island and on the arms are the symbols of the four evan- gelists.
Six heavy silver alms basins were first used in October, 1924, given in memory of Mrs. E. Lillie Studley by her husband, Mr. J. Edward Studley and her children. In the spring of 1925 the present brass candlesticks on the altar were given by Mrs. Virginia Gammell Cross.
Two memorial funds helped the financial situation not a little. At the annual meeting in January, 1922, it was announced that Miss Edith Knight, daughter of Robert Knight, had left to Grace Church a legacy of fifty thousand dollars to be added to the endowment. Walter H. Kimball's bequest of ten thousand dollars as a memorial to his father, Andrew A. Kimball, became available in 1924. The income of this fund is to be used to sup- plement the annual appropriation for music.
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Certain changes in services and meetings date from Mr. Sturges's rectorship. The best hour for Sunday School had for some time been a matter of serious consideration. At the first New Year (1917) Mr. Sturges transferred the main school from after the morning service to 9.30 a. m., with the kindergarten and the primary department at 3 p. m. The next fall, however, the Vestry having agreed to placing the Sunday morning service at II o'clock, Sunday School, was put at 10 a. m. Then 9.50 was tried, and before the end of Dr. Sturges's rectorship the main school was at 9.45. In the fall of 1920 the experiment was made of having an eleven o'clock session for the youngest children of the Church School,-as it began to be called,-with provision for older ones who wished to leave the church service before the sermon. Out of that venture our large and well organized eleven o'clock school has developed with its largely increased attendance of children of the families in the morning congregation.
Early in this rectorship, Mr. Matthews, whose wide knowledge and love of old carols is well known, gave an added touch of mediaeval atmosphere to the evening carol service at Christmastide by making it a Candle-Light Service.
Just before Christmas, 1919, the Rector began the friendly custom of bidding his parishioners to come together to sing carols and assist in decorating the church. Following the not very arduous labors, he and Mrs. Sturges invited all to refreshments in the Assembly Room.
Many of the regular attendants at the Sunday evening service find it impracticable to come at all on Sunday mornings. To meet their need Mr. Sturges in the fall of 1917 arranged for a celebration of the Holy Communion on the last Sunday in the month after the usual evening service.
Feeling that there was an opportunity for Grace Church to minister in the summer not only to those who remained in the city, but especially to strangers and visitors, Dr. Sturges in 1921 secured the services of eminent preachers for Sunday evenings in August. The plan met with such considerable success that, although necessarily in abeyance when the church was closed in the summer of 1922, it was revived in August, 1923 and 1924.
After prolonged consideration the conservative Vestry of Grace Church consented, in 1924, to have the services of Grace Church broadcasted by radio. For some time thereafter most of the morning services both on Sunday and week day and the Three
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Hours Service on Good Friday were broadcasted, as they are now from time to time, when some special reason exists.
The years of the Great War naturally gave occasion for many special services and patriotic gatherings. Red Cross Services, Union Patriotic Services, and Liberty Loan Sundays were of frequent occurrence.
At the close of the morning service on November 18, 1917, a national flag and a Grace Church "service flag" with forty-seven stars were formally raised. These flags were displayed on the front of the church; each star on the "service flag" represented one of the forty-seven men connected with Grace Church known to be with the armed forces of the country.
In the coal shortage of that winter, as a conservation measure, the pre-Lenten noonday services were discontinued and Grace Church was closed on weekdays from January 20th to February 12th.
On April 7, 1918, the anniversary of the entrance of this country into the War, there were services of Prayer and Intercession all over the country at five o'clock in the afternoon. Three down town churches were selected for the Protestant union services, of which Grace Church was one.
In September, 1918, Mr. Sturges, on every week day except Saturday, held a noonday service of prayer for our country and those in the service of our country and her allies. This service was continued until the regular noonday preaching services began early in November. The service on Sunday evening, September 22d, was a special one in memory of those who had fallen in their country's service, and particularly in remembrance of Frederick Alonzo Harmon, formerly tenor soloist at Grace Church, who, in Battery B, 103d Field Artillery, was killed in action near Beaumont on June 16, 1918. There was also a series of Sunday evening services commemorating our debt to our various allies, with appropriate addresses by President Faunce of Brown University and others.
On the occasion of the Armistice there was on Sunday morning, the 17th of November, a stirring service of Thanksgiving after victory. The services commemorating Armistice Day were in the following years notably well attended. Of the service on Friday, November II, 1921, Mr. Gardner said in the annual report that "the church was thronged by eager worshippers, three- quarters of whom were members of our own Parish."
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Under a more flexible provision of the amended charter the annual meeting of the Corporation was changed in 1920 to con- form to the calendar year and to accord with modern custom. For the first time since the meeting of organization in 1829 the annual meeting (1921) was not held on Easter Monday, but on the fourth Monday in January as now. At the annual meeting in January, 1923, the Rector revived a custom of the last years of Mr. Tomkins' rectorship and had a meeting of the Parish with reports from the various organizations. The meeting of 1923 was held in the Church and all adjourned to the Assembly Room afterwards for refreshments.
An interesting and important modification and development of parochial work was the organization in the fall of 1920 of the Social Service Committee of the Woman's Auxiliary. This group of active young women of the parish found in social service for the needy and the sick an appealing and very varied field of effort. So effective was their work that the Rector and the Vestry put increasingly large sums of money at their disposal and Dr. Sturges and his successor have relied on them for intelligent attention to a difficult and yet essential branch of the activities of the Church. For some time they met every Thursday morning. In connection with this organization Dr. Sturges in the Lent of 1921, at least, conducted an informal Bible or Discussion Class, which in one form or another was continued for several years and proved very stimulating and helpful to a growing group of the younger women.
The event in this rectorship of largest and most lasting signifi- cance was the establishment of the free church system in Grace Church, which even from the rectorship of Bishop Henshaw and the building of the present edifice had manifested very liberal tendencies in that direction. All unconsciously probably, the Corporation had done much to prepare for such a change when, against the advice of a majority of the Vestry, it had done away with all distinction in the rate of taxation on pews belonging to the Corporation and those belonging to private individuals, so that the former brought in nothing by way of rent and the private owners derived not one cent of financial advantage from their ownership. Of course the result of this was that persons leaving Grace Church for any reason found it increasingly hard to sell their pews and were more and more frequently deeding these pews to the Corporation, which gradually acquired title to many pews.
The issue of a free church was brought squarely before the Vestry when, at Convention in 1918, Bishop Perry came out
REV. PHILEMON F. STURGES, D.D.
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strongly against private ownership in sittings in the House of God and appointed the Rector of Grace Church on a committee to whom Convention referred this portion of the Bishop's address for consideration.
The passage in the address ran as follows:
"The spirit of democracy to which half the world is giving its life will soon bring the Church to judgment. It will find the spirit of the Church congenial. It will hear the message of the Church pronouncing in no uncertain terms the principles of human liberty and brotherhood. It will find at the same time, in certain parishes, practices which are altogether contrary to the Christian spirit, yet are adhered to for old associations' sake. The institu- tion of rented pews had once a place in the order and economy of parish life. Today, it is no longer defensible. The ownership of pews is intolerable. It is time for the Church to ask whether it can continue to buy and sell places of privilege in God's house, claimed by our Lord as the House of Prayer for all people. I appreciate the legal complications involved, and I offer no recom- mendation. It would be out of place, since Convention has no authority in a matter which is subject wholly to action by parish corporations. I simply point to the time, now at hand, when the few parishes of the land that still adhere to the traffic in pews will be required by the public conscience to break with the custom, or will find themselves relegated to the past."1
At the first convenient opportunity the Rector and the Senior Warden placed the matter before the Vestry for consideration and, if possible, for such action as would bring Grace Church more in accord with the spirit urged by the Bishop and demanded by modern times. No one seems to have expected that more than a short step could be taken and other than a compromise adopted. It soon appeared, however, that there was in the entire Vestry not only a deep and sincere interest in such purpose but a readiness to make a bold attempt to see if the time had not come when Grace Church should not only in practical effect be to a considerable extent free, but in name and fact as well as spirit, become a free Church.
A statement of the desire of the Bishop and the attitude and purpose of the Vestry was drawn up and sent to all the owners and hirers of pews with the request that for the coming year they relinquish all rights of private control while continuing to pay the tax of 20% as assessed at the last annual meeting.
1 Convention Journal, 1918.
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The communication further stated that if the response to this letter was generally favorable the Corporation would be expected to petition the Legislature for membership in the Corporation upon a new basis, inasmuch as the present membership had as its only legal source the owning of pews or hiring of sittings. When a new plan for membership had been legalized it would be in order to ask all owners of pews to deed their pews to the Corporation and to request all occupants of sittings, previously paying a tax, to agree to pay the same amount annually through the pledge system in such installments as best suited their convenience.
As events proved it was most fortunate for the financial stability of Grace Church that this step was taken before the Church was faced by a serious economic situation. The valuation of the pews had been forever fixed in the forties when the purchasing power of the dollar was, judged by the standard of living, far higher than at the end of the century. In 1918 on account of the effects of the Great War a most drastic further lowering in value was even then taking place. To advance the tax from 20% to 40% or even to 30% would seem on the face of things unreasonable and would have borne with undue severity on those who owned or hired the less desirable half of the pews, many of whom were paying all they could afford.
It must be remembered that the support of the parish, aside from the endowment, had come for many years from three sources : first, the 20% tax on pews which in 1917-1918 brought in $8,823; secondly from money received through the pledge system and the Sunday offerings, part of which was so designated by the givers and a large part assigned by the Rector from pledges designated to be used at his discretion. This source had in 1917- 1918 yielded approximately $5,000. The third and least desirable source was from guarantors of a deficiency fund, sought out logically from those who occupied by far the most desirable pews at a relatively slight advance in tax over their less fortunate neighbors. These guarantors agreed to pay up to $50 for each pledge to make good any deficiency at the end of the fiscal year. Needless to say these were annually called upon to pay and as regularly exhorted to renew their pledge-a result by no means so regularly attained. With the building of the Parish House and the receipt of the Jane Brown Fund this unsatisfactory source of income had been abandoned, at least for the time being.
When the marked decline in the purchasing power of money set in, the revenue of Grace Church in dollars and cents had to increase
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proportionately, or curtailment and hardships were inevitable. The same was true in the case of diocesan and foreign missions. To have attempted to bring about the needed increase from a proportionate increase in all three sources of support would have been well-nigh impossible. It was hard, both psychologically and practically, to bring home to a tax-payer his duty to make in addition a generous pledge for parish support. Naturally he thought that was what his tax was for. To secure a deficiency pledge on top of that and a contribution of appropriate size for missionary work was almost a psychological miracle. It was vastly simpler and more honest, after the free-church system was adopted, to say to a parishioner, in effect, "Your Church needs this amount for her work here and abroad. What part of this are you able and willing to contribute?" Indeed that is just what the earnest and open-minded Christians in Grace Church said to themselves with little prompting. As a result the income from the congregation which was $15,683 in 1918-19 including taxes on pews, increased to $41,458 in 1920-21, and in 1926 to $52,433.
The approval of the Vestry of the plan to make Grace Church a free church was given at a meeting held on March 3, 1919. At the annual meeting on Easter Monday of that year the matter was fully set forth in the report of the Vestry and it was announced that all but a few owners of pews had agreed to deed their pews to the Corporation when the Charter had been changed to provide another basis of membership. A motion was introduced at this meeting authorizing the Wardens to apply to the legislature for a change in the Charter that would make the membership in the Corporation consist of all those then members and such other communicants of Grace Church as might be elected members at any legal meeting of the Corporation. The vote to this effect was passed at a special meeting in October, and the Legislature amended the Charter at its session of 1920. At the annual meeting of Easter Monday, 1920, it was announced that practically all the pews would within a few weeks belong to the Corporation and that the Church would thereafter look to the pledges of its wor- shippers to provide the major part of its income.
Meanwhile at the General Convention held in Detroit in the fall of 1919 the Church throughout the nation had launched a Nation-Wide Campaign to put the finances of the missionary work on a sounder basis and to increase the revenues for all mission- ary purposes very materially. It was planned to achieve this re- sult by placing individual responsibility upon each parish for its
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share of the work. In a spirit of deep loyalty Grace Church, in spite of its own financial crisis, responded at once to the call of the national Church as brought to it by the Rector, who had attended the Detroit Convention as one of the delegates from Rhode Island. Mr. Rush Sturges was appointed by the Vestry as Chairman of a large parish committee on the Nation Wide Campaign with seven sub-committees for different phases of the work. After a lunch at the Parish House on Sunday, December 7, 1919, a numer- ous body of canvassers set forth and thoroughly canvassed the parish. The amount of money pledged in this campaign, though less than had been asked for, was far larger than any amount ever pledged before and enabled Grace Church to more than double its former contribution to the diocesan and foreign missions of the Church.
For the canvass of the fall of 1920 there was instituted a group organization of the parish with so-called "majors," "captains," and "lieutenants,"-a form of organization which had worked well elsewhere and which simplified the process of keeping in touch with every member of the parish through the assignment of every family to one of some hundred and forty groups into which the parish was divided. This also enlisted the valuable assistance of the women parishioners in conducting the canvasses held from 1920-1925 and in bringing the Lenten services and other matters of importance personally to the attention of all households in the parish. In the report for the year 1921 it could be stated that the number of pledges was more by one hundred and sixteen than ever before and that there had been a material increase in the amount pledged.
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