USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > A history of Grace Church in Providence, Rhode Island, 1829-1929 > Part 2
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"That this meeting be adjourned until Thursday evening next, the Seventh instant, to hear the report of the Committee, and that the present proceedings be signed by the Chairman and Secretary.
A. M. VINTON, Secretary. Providence, May 2nd, 1829."
Signed,
N. B. CROCKER, Chairman.
The four gentlemen named at this meeting of May 2d were clearly the leading spirits in the movement. With these four leaders, Wardwell, Hallett, Taylor, and Vinton, must be grouped Dr. Richmond Brownell, who was on the Committee of Eleven elected on May 7th1 to take charge of proceedings. It was at the
1 At the second meeting, May 7, 1829 there were present N. B. Crocker, Rev. Mr. Jones, G. A. DeWitt, George W. Hathaway, George Andrews, George S. Wardwell, Thomas B. Lippitt, Robert R. Stafford, James Jacobs, Charles Harris, Wm. Muenscher, Austin Gurney, Richmond Brownell, Randall Holden, Charles F. Tillinghast, Amos M. Vinton. The names in italics were on the Committe of Eleven, together with the following who were not recorded as present at the second meeting: John Taylor, Benjamin F. Hallett, William E. Richmond, Lewis L. Miller.
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A History of Grace Church
meeting in his office on May 26th that the "appellation of Grace Church" was adopted, and there the first meeting of the Vestry was held on June 4th, and many subsequent meetings as well. On the organization of the Vestry, Mr. Wardwell and Dr. Brownell were elected Wardens. Dr. Brownell was also chairman of the vitally important committee to provide a supply for the pulpit. This committee "were requested to exert themselves to procure men of talents and true piety." How efficiently they did so, the list on pages 15 and 16 will indicate.
As a result of the meetings of May 7th and May 9th, a place of worship was secured as is set forth in the following item from the Manufacturers and Farmers Journal of May 14, 1829.
"The church formerly occupied by the Richmond Street Con- gregational Society and more recently by the Unitarian Society has been leased by a number of gentlemen who are about organiz- ing a Protestant Episcopal Church on the west side of the river and Divine service will be performed therein on Sunday next, it is expected by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Griswold. The pews on this occasion will be free, after which they will be let at public auction. The object and intention of the Society is to erect a church to be located on the West side at some future period."
The building that was hired, called the old "Tin Top," on the corner of Richmond and Pine Streets, seems to have been very small and much of a make-shift. It had been built years before by the Pacific Congregational Society, and after 1832 it served a great variety of purposes, from a Roman Catholic Church to a theatre, a circus, a brewery, and a junk shop. Finally, having been a livery stable, it was torn down in 1895 or 1896.
A house of worship thus being procured and services started, the next step was to secure a legal organization. A committee, headed by Benjamin F. Hallett, Esq., one of the two lawyers among the founders and one of the first vestrymen, was chosen to draft a Charter for Grace Church in Providence and to apply to the legislature for incorporation. This Charter having been granted was accepted on June 29, 1829. At the same meeting of June 2d which approved the form of Charter, a Vestry of seven members was elected. One of these, John Taylor, was elected the first Treasurer and thereafter with few exceptions the treasurer was also a vestryman. For "Secretary and Vestry Clerk," the Corporation elected Amos M. Vinton, whose younger brother Alexander was to become the third rector. He was not a vestry- man, nor were a large number of his twenty-two successors in that
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Organization and First Rectors
office. At this same meeting the delegates to the State Con- vention and to the Convention of the Eastern Diocese were elected, and the vote of conformity already recorded was passed. The Vestry organized by the election of George S. Wardwell and Dr. Richmond Brownell as Wardens.
The matter of a Rector remained to be settled. For a time there was some hope that Bishop Griswold might be induced to move to Providence from Bristol, and a subscription was started to raise a thousand dollars a year for his salary as Rector. Bishop Clark in 1879 surmised that the Bishop had a natural hesitation in trusting to such uncertain financial support as this new parish could at best afford. However, as Massachusetts had for some- time been urgent that the Bishop, already over three score years of age, should reside near Boston, and his refusals had been on the ground that he could not bear then to leave the parish where he had ministered for a quarter of a century, it seems that any hope that he would move to Providence was doomed to disappointment. In fact it was only a year later that the Bishop yielded to the pleas from Massachusetts and accepted the rectorship at Salem.
The attempt to get Bishop Griswold was followed by calls to Rev. William Richmond of New York, and Rev. Samuel Fuller, Jr., a deacon, and tutor at Washington College, now Trinity College, Hartford, who had preached at Grace Church in the fall of '29. Meanwhile the committee to supply the pulpit were doing their best to keep the church open and the interest of the faithful sustained. The following list of twenty-seven preachers as recorded in the minutes shows that there was not only no lack of variety, but that some of the ablest preachers in the country were secured to preach to the struggling congregation in this little church on a side street. Alonzo Potter and Benjamin Smith, destined to fame as Bishops, were even then leading lights in Boston and Philadelphia; eight others, including William Cros- well, James Sabine, and especially Gregory Bedell, were said to be preachers of no small repute. Bedell's pulpit at St. Andrew's, Philadelphia, was later to be occupied as rector by the two Clarks of Grace Church, as the pulpit of St. Paul's, Boston, was to be filled by three of our ex-rectors.
Rt. Rev. A. V. Griswold, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese.
Rev. N. B. Crocker, Rector of St. John's, Providence.
Rev. Parker Adams, Rector of St. Stephen's Church, New Hart- ford, N. Y.
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A History of Grace Church
Rev. Ezra B. Kellogg, Rector of Trinity Church, Brooklyn, Conn. Rev. George Taft, Rector of St. Paul's, Pawtucket.
Rev. John West, Rector of St. Thomas' Church, Taunton, Mass.
Rev. Alonzo Potter, (later Bishop of Pennsylvania,) Rector of St. Paul's, Boston.
Rev. William Croswell, Rector of Christ Church, Boston.
Rev. Thomas W. Coit, Rector of Christ's Church, Cambridge, Mass.
Rev. William Richmond, Rector of St. Michael's Church, New York.
Rev. E. M. P. Wells, Chaplain of House of Reformation, Boston.
Rev. Joseph Muenscher, Rector of St. John's Church, No. Hamp- ton.
Rev. D. L. B. Goodwin, Rector of St. John's Church, Sutton. 1Rev. George W. Hathaway, residing in Providence.
2Rev. A. Jones, Rector of St. Andrew's Church, Charleston, Va. Rev. Samuel B. Shaw, Rector of Christ's Church, Guilford, Vt.
Rev. Gregory T. Bedell, (later Bishop of Ohio), Rector of St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia, Pa.
Rev. Benjamin B. Smith, (later Bishop of Kentucky), Rector of Grace Church, Philadelphia.
Rev. Edward C. McGuire, Rector of St. George's Church, Fred- ericksburg, Va.
Rev. Sutherland Douglass.
Rev. James Sabine, Rector of Grace Church, Boston.
Rev. John Bristed, Rector of St. Michael's Church, Bristol.
Rev. Joseph H. Price, Deacon, residing at Salem, Mass.
Rev. Mr. Clark, Portsmouth, N. H.
Rev. Henry C. Knight, Montgomery County, Maryland.
Rev. George F. Haskins, Deacon, Chaplain of the House of Industry, Boston.
Rev. Samuel Fuller, Jr. Deacon, Washington College, Hartford, Conn.
The invitation to Rev. Samuel Fuller, Jr. was extended on November 30, 1829, evidently with the expectation that it might be accepted at once. Mr. Fuller first asked for a month's con- sideration, and at Christmas time, after the salary offered had
1 One of the organizers of Grace Church, then a teacher and later rector of St. Mark's, Warren.
2 Presumably another of the organizers and the son of Alexander Jones of Providence. He officiated at the first baptism in the Parish.
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Organization and First Rectors
been increased from $600 to $750 replied, "the decision is in your favor," but added that he felt bound to the college until the end of the winter term, April 15, 1830. The Vestry remonstrated, in view of the very ill effects of such a postponement, but in vain, as it was evident that the college could not dispense with the services of one of its small faculty of four any earlier than the date assigned. The results of this almost crushing disappointment were fortunately somewhat mitigated by the fact that Grace Church was then, in December, benefiting from the services of the Rev. Joseph H. Price, and the Vestry were able to secure him as a "temporary pastor" for the greater part of the time until the first Rector was ready to enter into office on May 2, 1830, just one year after the first meeting to consider the formation of a new parish. In the minutes of April 23, we read of "the thanks of this vestry for his (Mr. Price's) services rendered Grace Church as their temporary Pastor and their sincere wishes for his health and future prosperity."
At the annual meeting on Easter Monday, 1830, the infant church was still awaiting a rector, but conditions were far from discouraging. Services had been maintained and the Treasurer's report showed total receipts of $723.69, leaving a reasonable balance in the Treasury. The Corporation elected the same officers and enlarged the Vestry from seven to nine. The first of the two new vestrymen was Dr. Lewis Leprilete Miller, of a family memorable in the annals of Grace Church and the only one of the founders to whom there is a memorial in the church. Dr. Miller continued as vestryman until 1842, and he and his wife were devoted supporters of the Church. Their daughter and her husband, John B. Anthony, were for over half a century most closely associated with the welfare of Grace Church, and their granddaughters have continued that faithful service to the present time.
Samuel Fuller, Jr., then in his twenty-ninth year, was a clergy- man's son, a man of refinement and learning, more suited to academic circles than to the activities of a busy mercantile com- munity. He had graduated at Union College at Schenectady in 1822, but had done little pastoral work, and was only in deacon's orders1 when called to Grace Church in 1829, though he held a responsible position on the faculty of what was then Washington
1 Samuel Fuller, Jr., was ordained priest by Bishop Griswold in St. John's Church on June 6, 1830.
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A History of Grace Church
College in Hartford. The most memorable work of his long and useful life was in professorships at Kenyon College and Berkeley Divinity School at Middletown, Connecticut. For a quarter of a century, however, he was rector in Litchfield, Connecticut, and Andover, Massachusetts, and was there regarded with much affection and esteem. In writing to encourage the Vestry of Grace Church, on the occasion of Mr. Fuller's departure after one year of service, Bishop Griswold said that, though he had recom- mended Mr. Fuller and though Mr. Fuller had worked in perfect harmony with Dr. Crocker of St. John's, which was an important point in his favor, he had himself come to the opinion "that, worthy and able as he certainly is, his talents are not particularly adapted to the building up of a new Church. It is a very im- portant situation and requires to be filled by a man of talents and active zeal and great prudence."
As the first year of Mr. Fuller's rectorship drew to a close, the Vestry found themselves faced with a serious situation. The Rector had preached his first sermon only a few days before the date for re-renting the pews, and there had not been the hoped-for advance in the amount realized; nor had there been any marked growth in the number of communicants or of families interested. In such a situation the increase in salary which they had hoped to make and on which Mr. Fuller had doubtless counted seemed out of the question. They still hoped for better times but the better times had not come. At the annual meeting of April 4, 1831, Mr. Hallett read a letter which the Corporation voted to send to Mr. Fuller.1 In this letter the Corporation urged Mr. Fuller to stay on at the same salary, but showed considerable discouragement inasmuch as "the growth of the church has not been so great as we had hoped for, and that it still remains an experiment to be more fully tried whether a flourishing Episcopal Church can be established in this section of the town . . . . in our opinion the success and probably the existence of Grace Church under the present circumstances depend upon the con- tinuance of our present Rector with us." At the same time the thanks of the Corporation were sent for his "faithful services in the Ministry during the present year." To this, a week later, Mr.
1 In connection with this Corporation meeting it is to be noted that the Rector was not ex officio a member of Corporation or Vestry until the change in the Charter in 1916, in Dr. Sturges's rectorship. The Rectors for over fifty years seem seldom even to have attended meetings, except during the greater part of Bishop Clark's rectorship, when he was an elected member of the Vestry.
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Organization and First Rectors
Fuller curtly replied "circumstances beyond my control render it impossible for me to accept the invitation of the parish to con- tinue with them." The Vestry acquiesced with an expression of "the good feelings of the corporation towards him and their wishes for his future prosperity"; and the first rectorship came to a close at the end of the month.
As the annual rental of pews was to take place on May 10th, the Vestry lost no time in writing an urgent letter to Bishop Griswold, then recently removed to Salem, urging him to become Rector at a salary for the present of $750 a year. The Bishop courteously but firmly replied that to leave Salem "would be imprudent and attended with evil effects," but also said of Providence, "I know not any town or city on this earth which as a place of residence I should prefer before it." Perhaps it was with this encourage- ment that the Vestry immediately sent an invitation to the Rev. John Bristed, Bishop Griswold's energetic successor at St. Michael's, Bristol, which in its turn was very politely declined, although "so obligingly put into my hands and so judiciously sustained by the gentlemen composing the Committee." Then followed fruitless negotiations with rectors from Vermont to Virginia, while summer and autumn slipped by. Doubtless it was this trying period that Bishop Clark had in mind when he said in his Thirtieth Anniversary Address, on Easter, 1859: "There was not a man of wealth identified with the original enterprise. There was no missionary organization to fall back upon, . . There is something almost pathetic in the records of their Vestry and Corporation meetings, in the efforts made here and there and everywhere to secure a competent rector, a man able to build them up and give strength to the enterprise for such a compensation as they felt themselves warranted in offering. It required a great deal of faith and effort to keep the little frail rickety bark afloat, and I do not wonder that in their discouragement the question was once asked by one of the original movers in the work after every expedient and contrivance seemed to be exhausted, 'May we not as well pull out the plug and let her sink?' "
To the same effect the Rev. Mr. Clark wrote in his 1833 report1: "Certainly the highest commendation is due to the few individuals who with limited means and amid every discouragement embarked in the enterprise of building this church, and raising up this parish. The Lord has seen fit to crown their labors with entire success."
1 Convention Journal, p. 13-14.
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A History of Grace Church
Under these circumstances it is not strange that the Vestry did not feel justified in offering more than the most meagre salary nor in contracting any engagement of more than a year's duration. Indeed the language of the records strongly suggests that it was understood that the Vestry was thus restricted in its power. Nor is it to be wondered at that even the most zealous young clergy- men hesitated to accept a one year's rectorship under such dubious conditions.
At this stage the Vestry, late in 18311, turned to the Rev. George F. Haskins, a young clergyman, who, as a deacon and priest, had ministered to Grace Church, from time to time, both before and after Mr. Fuller's rectorship, and who then was in charge of the services. Accordingly, on January 21, 1832, the record reads "that the Rev. George F. Haskins be invited to become the minister of Grace Church for one year from the time he com- menced his ministrations with us." The remuneration offered ($500 a year) was considerably smaller than that suggested for any other clergyman that had been approached.
Ten days later Mr. Haskins replies very cordially and modestly from Union Street, to the effect that he must decline this wholly unexpected mark of kindness, saying, "I came among you as a missionary. At present, on account of my youth and other considerations I aspire to no higher office. As such, I have thus far labored with you cheerfully and happily; with what success, God only knows. As such, it is still my desire to labour, wherever God may call me." It may be that the "other considerations" included some questions of belief, since a few years later Mr. Haskins is found in the Roman Catholic communion in Boston, where he had a long, if not conspicuous, service. For the time, however, Mr. Haskins continued his services at Grace Church, prepared the first class for confirmation, and represented thê parish at the Special Rhode Island Convention in March, 1832.
About this same time serious efforts were undertaken to secure a permanent house of worship, the building of which had been an early dream of the founders. The Richmond Street building was very small, its location was not highly desirable, and a site more central and nearer the homes of the parishioners was sought for.
At the same meeting at which Mr. Haskins was invited to become minister, the Vestry records a vote of thanks to "Col. William Blodgett for the valuable services rendered them in their endeavours to purchase the Providence Theatre," and a fortnight
1 Mr. Haskins records a funeral on December 3, 1831.
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Organization and First Rectors
later a Corporation meeting unanimously votes to purchase the Theatre "if it can be obtained for Six Thousand Dollars," author- izes the Wardens and Vestry to convert the building into a house of public worship, to purchase an organ, and to raise funds for these purposes.
A prominent Providence firm-with Russell Warren an active member of the Corporation, as architect-Tolman and Bucklin, was engaged to make over the theatre which stood on the same corner as the present church at a cost of about $6,000.
While these ambitious undertakings were in hand, the Vestry, through the friendly offices of the Rev. William Richmond, the Rector of St. Michael's Church, New York, came upon the man who was destined to be the real founder of Grace Church in its material welfare and spiritual strength. On May 2d, the Vestry voted to request Mr. Richmond to invite the Rev. John Alonzo Clark of New York, to visit Providence and to preach one or more Sundays with a pledge that they would offer him the Rector- ship for one year. The response to this request not being at first encouraging, the Vestry invited Mr. James C. Richmond to "take orders as speedily as possible" and assume charge of the parish. This invitation not being accepted, on July 9, 1832, the Wardens and Vestry were "directed to invite the Rev. John A. Clark to be Rector of Grace Church." One thousand dollars was "tendered as a Salary." In the letter of the Senior Warden, urging Mr. Clark to accept, the number of families attached for three years past is set down as forty or fifty, the number of com- municants as thirty or thirty-five. Mr. Wardwell continues, "The principal discouragements, alluded to, have been, as we conceive, the want of a commodious house, and the permanent ministrations of a faithful, devoted, and acceptable Rector"; and expresses the hope, so abundantly to be fulfilled, that "by the faithful cooperation of us all, with God's blessing our church will be enlarged and permanently erected on the true foundation." This letter makes clear that Mr. Clark had not then been in Providence nor had any of the Vestry met him. The original intention that one of the Vestry should go to New York to confer with Mr. Clark is abandoned, "the excitement respecting the Cholera occasioning obstructions to our intercourse."
Mr. Clark, having visited Providence and doubtless having been impressed with the spirit of earnestness and optimism then prevailing in the parish, in September accepted the Rectorship and began his duties early in October, his salary dating from the eighth.
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A History of Grace Church
The church with its "pulpit, reading desk, and communion table," together with the new organ built by Henry Erben of New York, was ready for occupancy early in November. The 15th of that month was named as the great day of consecration, when Grace Church with a new Rector and a large and handsome house of worship should, after the years of waiting, be in a position to go rapidly ahead and assume a leading place in the work of the Church for Christ in city and in state.
The skilfully remodeled theatre was well adapted to serve the purposes of the parish for the critical decade immediately ahead. Its location is correctly described, in the letter of invitation sent to Mr. Clark, as on one of the principal streets, surrounded by a dense population, and so desirable that the Vestry "know of no situation which they should prefer, were a choice in their power." Strange as it seems today it was located in the very heart of the residential district where most of its fifty families lived. Indeed, from Pine to Fountain Street and from Market Square to Greene Street, there was hardly a block where some Grace Church parishioner did not have his home or place of business. The Wardwells lived on Washington Street, the Richmonds and Halletts on Broad and Weybosset Streets; while on Westminster Street were the Taylors, Millers, Vintons, Brownells, and Hoppins.
The new house of worship, moreover, with its ornamental windows and tower in front, had much dignity and attractiveness. It was called "a commodious edifice," "a fine example of Gothic architecture," and so it doubtless was to the taste of that time. Staples in 1842 describes it as follows: "It is a very handsome Gothic building, with appropriate tracery on the windows and doors, and is an ornament to that part of the city." Outside of the choir loft, it would probably hold some six hundred people, and within a few months the new Grace Church was fre- quently to be packed to the doors.
The striking and forceful personality of the new rector furnishes the key to the remarkable growth of the next few months and years, when the roll of communicants increased from forty-one in October, 1832, to one hundred and fifty some seven months later, and in 1835 to over two hundred and sixty. These additions, largely by conversion or confirmation, brought Grace Church from a place as fifth or sixth of the seven churches in 1831 to the largest in the state in 1835; St. Michael's, Bristol, reporting two hundred and twenty-eight communicants in 1835; St. John's, some one hundred and seventy; and Trinity, Newport, one hundred and'
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Organization and First Rectors
fifteen. In each of the years 1831 and 1832 eight baptisms were reported to Convention. After seven months at Grace Church Mr. Clark reported eighty-four, fifty-nine of these being adults.
This zealous and persuasive evangelist, whose watchword may well have been the words which he boasts were inscribed on the walls of his new church, "Holiness to the Lord," was in his thirty- first year and had graduated at Union College in 1823.1 He is thus described by Bishop Clark, who, having succeeded him at St. Andrew's, in Philadelphia, when failing health forced him to re-
sign, knew him well in his last days. "Of his ministry here, of the impression that he made upon the community by his earnest, faithful, impassioned preaching, of his efforts to stir up the fire of missionary zeal throughout the Diocese, of his success in planting new churches here and there in our rural districts, of the multitudes that he gathered into the Episcopal fold from all the surrounding religious denominations, of his more signal triumphs in arresting the careless and impenitent, and bringing them to the feet of Jesus in humble faith to ask for mercy, of his tender unction at the bedside of the dying, of his faithfulness in season and out of season, in the pulpit, in the lecture room, in the Sunday School, in the parlor, and in the street, I need not speak at length. He lives so fresh in your memory and heart that there is no call for me to speak his eulogy."2
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