USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > A history of Grace Church in Providence, Rhode Island, 1829-1929 > Part 3
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It seems doubtful if among the many remarkable men who have exercised their ministry in Grace Church there has been one of more magnetic personality than that of this pioneer, so filled was he with the zeal of the Lord and the fire of His Spirit.
After Mr. Clark's arrival there was more than a month in which to prepare for the opening and consecration of the new church, and the records are full of items connected therewith. On the fifteenth of November a deed of dedication in behalf of the Cor- poration was executed by the Wardens, "divesting ourselves, our heirs and successors of all our rites and disclaiming all authority ever hereafter to employ said Church for any common or profane use . . promising in behalf of said Corporation and their successors, as far as in us lies, to take care of the repairs of said
1 It is of interest that the President of Union College, which under his inspir- ing spiritual teaching gave to the Church many devoted ministers besides the first two rectors of Grace Church, and to Brown University its great leader, Francis Wayland, was Dr. Eliphalet Nott, the grandfather of Rev. E. N. Potter, D.D. and once a student in Brown University.
2Bishop Clark's Historical Discourse, Easter, 1859.
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Church that it may be kept, together with its furniture, sacred utensils, and Books, in a decent state for the celebration of Divine Service; and also that we will, as God shall enable us, endeavour always to procure and support a minister in Priests orders to celebrate Gods Holy worship in said church according to the liturgy aforesaid."
In response to this deed, Bishop Griswold read the following letter of consecration,
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. Whereas certain persons members of the parish of Grace Church in Providence and State of Rhode Island from the desire of promoting the worship of Almighty God, for the better accommodation of those who attend Divine Service, and that the administration of the religious Ordinances of our blessed Saviour may be more decent and edifying, have at their own labour, cost, and expense, erected and prepared a house or edifice meet and suitable for a house of prayer and have furnished it with a pulpit, reading desk, and communion table, and whereas they have expressed a desire that the said edifice should in a solemn manner be dedicated to Almighty God, in order to fill men's minds with more reverence for the place where his honour dwells and that they may with affections more devout and to more edification adore his holy name; and whereas the said parishioners have by their Rector, Wardens and Vestry requested me as the Bishop of the Diocese to consecrate this the said house of God's sacred worship-Therefore, I do now and hereby pronounce and declare that this house hereafter to be called Grace Church is and henceforth shall be set apart and separated from all unhallowed, profane, and worldly uses, and consecrated to the service and worship of Almighty God, for reading his holy word, for cele- brating his holy sacraments, for offering the sacrifice of prayer and praise, for blessing the people in his name, and for the per- formance of all other holy offices according to the canons, and usages, and liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. And as the minister and in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I do hereby direct and require that men ever enter this house with devout reverence and religious awe, remembering that God is in heaven and we upon earth, that with sincere hearts and true repentance they confess their sins before him, and worship God in spirit and with the understanding also, making melody in their hearts to the Lord, that in this house the doctrines of Christ be truly preached and the whole counsel of
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God be faithfully declared, that here men with due reverence hear the Holy Scriptures and in an honest and good heart receive with meekness the ingrafted word which is able to save their souls, and that in this place all things shall be done decently and in order, and to edifying, to the glory of God and the building up of the Redeemer's kingdom.
Signed, ALEXANDER V. GRISWOLD, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese."
November 15, 1832.
On November 23rd and 24th, with four pews reserved for a future enlargement of the chancel, the ninety-eight remaining pews on the floor of the church, were sold at auction. The values ranged from $75 to $350, and so great was the demand that a large sum was received in premiums and the proceeds of the sale were some four thousand dollars in excess of the seventeen thou- sand dollars which had been spent for the land, building, and fur- nishings. Verily the venture of faith, under the blessing of God, had met with a most cheering response from the community, and a church on the "west side of the river" was no longer an "experiment." A tax at the rate of six percent per annum was levied on the assessed values of the pews until the next Easter, for the support of worship, so that at last Grace Church was on a reasonably firm financial basis. It may be said here that this method of support, by a uniform tax levied on fixed values of pews, was the chief means of financing the parish until the church was made free in Dr. Sturges's rectorship.
At the annual meeting on Easter Monday, 1833, the tax rate was lowered to four and one-half percent, but was raised there- after from time to time, until, in the last years of the pew system, it was twenty percent. It is rather appalling to think what a small financial obligation this originally laid on each pewholder. The pews must have held six persons, yet there were many pew- holders who were bound to pay for the support of their church less than four dollars a year. Even the holders of the best pews were taxed only fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents per annum. That was "indeed the day of small things," as Bishop Clark said in his memorable sermon of Easter Day, 1859, when he reviewed the first thirty years of the Church's history.
There seems to have been no hesitation as to the best manner of spending the four thousand dollars surplus, on which, indeed,
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the Vestry had presumably been counting. Less than a week after the sale of the pews the record reads, "that Messrs. [Resolved] Waterman and [John] Taylor be a committee to ascertain the terms that Thomas C. Hoppin will sell his estate in the rear of the Church." A special meeting of the Corporation was held a short time later to authorize the purchase, which was carried through, presumably at the limit set of four thousand dollars. This gave the parish a convenient parsonage in a most desirable location. The Rector was given the use of the house free until Easter, when he began to pay rent of two hundred dollars a year.
In the records of November, 1832, appears a short item of long and far-reaching significance and of great intrinsic interest.
"A letter was presented from the Ladies Sewing Circle of Grace Church presenting an elegant Flagon and two cups valued at one Hundred and thirty-five Dollars for communion service which was received and accepted." Later, as the records of the society show, other pieces were added until the communion silver given was valued at three hundred and eighty-five dollars. This was the society founded by the ladies of the infant Grace Church on November 30th, 1829, at the house of the Senior Warden "to assist in establishing the parish of Grace Church, which was organized the same year; and also to aid in general missionary purposes," and called at first by the distinctive title of "the Episcopal Female Association."1
This remarkable society, which has ever been unfailing in good works, was for many years one of the chief sources of support of the missionary work in the state and seems to have been, in the '30's and '40's, the leading social organization of that part of the city. Numbered among its members are said to have been many who were not even parishioners of Grace Church.
Not the least striking feature is the last clause of the original purpose of this ancient society, "to aid in general missionary purposes," for at that early date little was said or thought on this important subject. Such missionary spirit, however, exactly suited the purposes and activities of Mr. Clark. In his first report to Convention he says, "A missionary society has been organized auxiliary to 'The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States',"-a phrasing prophetic of the Woman's Auxiliary,-and, a few lines later, "The
1 An account of this society, which under different names has continued to the present, is given in the Appendix.
REMODELED PROVIDENCE THEATRE FIRST CHURCH ON PRESENT SITE
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Organization and First Rectors
ladies of the parish are also making efforts by their united industry to raise the means to spread the gospel more fully thro' the destitute parts of our own state." Soon Mr. Clark was known, at least unofficially, as Missionary to the South County, and in 1834 conducted an unusual and very fruitful evangelical mission at Westerly as a result of which Christ Church was founded that same year, probably the first of many daughters of Grace Church. At this Convention the Rhode Island Missionary Society was recognized, with the much discussed Rhode Island Convocation (clerical) as its board of managers. Under this organization missionary work in the State pressed forward as never before and in the convocation Mr. Clark was a leading figure.
In his next report (1834) the Rector notes that "the season of Lent, especially of 'Passion Week' was greatly blessed to our people; more than twenty persons were led to give up their hearts to God."1
In this Lent the Rector delivered a very notable course of lectures on the "Holy rite of confirmation" which the Vestry proposed to publish. The record gives one hundred and seventy- six persons confirmed during that year, one of the largest totals recorded at any time in the century.
Mr. Clark also refers to the formation of an adult colored Sun- day School, "well-attended (140), and productive of great good for the intellectual and moral improvement of this depressed and ill-fated portion of our population.". In this education of the considerable colored population of the city Grace Church was following the notable example set for many years by St. John's Church. The regular Sunday School for the children of the parish was also serving well the needs of the com- munity, as three hundred and fifty-three names were enrolled- probably more than the average enrollment throughout the century and more than at the present time.
In the "Personal Reminiscence of Grace Church" written for the Providence Journal by "A. E." in 1857, Mrs. James H. Eames records her memories as follows:
"Mr. Clark's earnest and impressive preaching soon filled the church, and numbers were daily added to it.
"How well I remember the old church, with its reading-desk and pulpit ornamented with arches like 'pigeon holes.' One
1 Convention Journal for 1834, pp. 11-12.
2 On November 10, 1833, Bishop Griswold confirmed 116 in Grace Church. This was said to be the largest class ever confirmed by Bishop Griswold.
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Sunday a strange clergyman officiated there, and, as was the custom then, after the prayers were read he went down into the vestry room to change his surplice for the gown. When he came back into the reading-desk, as he had to, he did not see his way clear to get up into the pigeon hole over the pulpit, which was directly above the desk. He looked up and all around, and then retraced his steps to the vestry, evidently thinking there might be a separate stairway into the pulpit. Seeing his embarrassment, Dr. Brownell went to him and safely piloted him to his elevated post.
"During the early years of Grace Church, the music was not very elaborate, the chants being more often read than sung. The 'Te Deum' was rarely sung except on grand occasions, like Christ- mas and Easter. Often on Sunday the choir would sing only the first five or six verses of it, thinking the patience of the con- gregation would not hold out if they went through the whole of that hymn, even though it is full of praise and adoration.
"During the whole of Dr. Clark's rectorship, and I think also of Dr. Vinton's, the antecommunion service was never read in the morning, and the Holy Communion was administered in the afternoon. During Mr. Clark's rectorship, while the communi- cants were going to and from the chancel, the congregation would sing verses from favorite hymns, William H. Greene 'setting the tunes.' "
The marked spiritual activity in the Church at this time was naturally. accompanied by prosperity in material affairs. The receipts for the fiscal years '30, '31, '32 were less than $1,000 each, but the sale of pews and generous contributions brought the total receipts for 1833 to the handsome figure of $22,623, and ordinary receipts for the year ending Easter, 1834, amounted to $2,673. So large was the attendance, moreover, that the Vestry several times considered building galleries or otherwise enlarging the church. That the interest was not confined to Episcopalians is attested by the appointment of a committee "to procure seats in the church for the students attached to Brown University," as well as by the assurance to Mr. Clark on his resignation that the profound regret of his own people "will be generally participated by the people of other Denominations in this city and vicinity."
In this period of beginnings the acquisition of Grace Church Cemetery, which, much enlarged, is still the property of the Corporation and is occasionally used for burials, in spite of being surrounded by the busy life of the city, may well be recorded. The appointment of a committee on August 7th, 1834,-to
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ascertain the expense of purchasing "a suitable Burial Ground" and the likelihood of raising a sufficient subscription,-was speedily followed by the purchase by the Corporaion of the older part of the present cemetery and energetic efforts to put it into proper condition. On the first committee on care and management of the cemetery it is interesting to note the earliest appearance in the records of the familiar name of Amasa Manton. In the April following, his name appears among those present at the annual meeting, and thereafter for nearly thirty years he played a promi- nent part, especially in the building of the present church and the first chapel. To both these undertakings he was so generous a contributor that at this distance of time it is hard to see how they could possibly have been carried through without him.
The highly satisfactory state of affairs in the young parish was not destined to be of long duration. Hardly had the third year of the rectorship of Mr. Clark begun than he received urgent calls to move to a larger field. By May, 1835, he had decided that it was his duty to go to St. Andrew's Church in Philadelphia. In his letter of resignation to the Vestry, Mr. Clark wrote, "Stronger and holier ties can never bind me to any people, than those which connect me with Grace Church and no one can know the pain it costs me to sever them."
Thus ended the rectorship of this gifted man, who had in less than three years not only won the deep affection and profound respect of a rapidly increasing congregation, but had planted foundations for Grace Church so deep and strong that its position of influence in city and diocese was assured for years to come. Such results could not come from mere popularity and superficial magnetism but bear witness to the unflagging zeal and devoted consecration of a true "Servant of Christ."
CHAPTER III
THREE NEW ENGLAND WORTHIES
VINTON-HENSHAW-CLARK
1835-1866
On the slope of a small hill overlooking the Seekonk River, under an unimpressive stone bearing the well-deserved inscription, "Faithful unto death, I will give thee a crown of life," rests the body of a son of Providence who some two generations ago was hailed as the most eloquent preacher of the Episcopal Church in the North Atlantic States. A large frame, impressive head, graceful gestures, and voice of unusual richness and musical quality gave the reading and preaching of the third rector of Grace Church wide fame, as his intellectual and spiritual qualities gave him enduring influence. He it was who preached the con- secration sermon not only of the present St. Stephen's, but even of Trinity Church, Boston, where he was regarded as the spiritual father of Phillips Brooks. When the English Church generously sought an American to preach in Westminster Abbey on the Sunday nearest the Fourth of July, 1876, this same son of Provi- dence was selected for that difficult and delicate task.
Yet when Alexander Hamilton Vinton, M.D., attheageoftwenty- eight came to Grace Church as his first rectorship, not many would have predicted for this Providence stripling so brilliant a future. Sound training, an uncompromising sense of duty, and burning zeal to win souls to Christ, however difficult the way, seem to have been the qualities that attracted the Vestry of Grace Church and led them to select as their leader this young Pomfret physician, fresh from the General Theological Seminary in New York and as yet only in deacon's orders.
But it was not to this son of two old Providence families-the prophet in their midst-that the church turned first after the departure of Mr. Clark,-perhaps because in the summer of 1835 Dr. Vinton was more concerned in winning a wife than in seeking a pastorate. To find a worthy successor to the saintly Clark, the committee looked at once to New York, where at St. Stephen's the Rev. William Jackson was doing a distinguished work. So
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strong was the invitation, and doubtless so appealing the pleas of Mr. Clark himself, that Mr. Jackson and his wife came to Provi- dence, where he preached1 several Sundays in Grace Church. Their visit and their evident fitness for the work occasioned the following letter from the Wardens, the opening and close of which suggest that Mrs. Jackson made an impression in Provi- dence not unlike that of her husband's preaching.
1195473
"Providence, July 16, 1835.
"Rev. and very Dear Sir,
Yourself and Lady having done us the great favour of a visit and you of preaching several times to our highest acceptance and satisfaction; and both of you having in the intercourse of private society become acquainted with many of the people of our parishes; be pleased to accept for yourself and Mrs. Jackson the hearty and sincere thanks of the people of the parish for the favour thus con- ferred, and for the unalloyed pleasure which has attended this interchange of sentiments and feelings. Yourself and Mrs. Jackson are now perhaps better able to decide on the invitation which we, some weeks ago gave you . Permit us to say that the motives which prompted us to adopt that measure have been, more than language can express, increased and strength- ened by subsequent events. *
May that great being, whose servant you are, direct and counsel you as to him shall seem right and proper-and evermore, and wherever you may be, shower upon yourself and your amiable Lady the choicest of his blessings."
But then, as since, New York was more likely to take rectors from Grace Church than to furnish them to her, and Mr. Jackson wrote in due time that "it does not seem clear that we ought at present to leave the Station the Great Head of the Church has assigned us in this city."
It was after this disappointment, in September, 1835, that Dr. Vinton was approached, in some degree, it is evident, through his former classmate at the General Theological Seminary, Henry, the son of Resolved Waterman, the highly respected Treasurer of
1 The record of this preaching by Mr. Jackson and traditional reference to that of Rev. Henry Waterman and Rev. A. Kaufman seem all that is known of the officiating clergymen from June Ist, '35 to April Ist, '36.
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Grace Church. With characteristic spirit Dr. Vinton replied that his duty bade him heed a call to Portland, Maine, inasmuch as "the low and distracted state of the Portland parish would deter a minister who has already a settlement from establishing himself there."
It may be, too, that there was some slight hesitation in the call extended to a young man, well known in Providence, whose views in his student days at the Yale medical school, and probably during his three years at Brown University, had not been those of a professing Christian. Young Vinton and his brothers had been frankly skeptical of the Christian faith and even agnostic. Dr. Vinton freely acknowledged that his reading of Bishop Butler at the insistence of a friend first opened his mind to the truths of Christianity, and further paid tribute to the spiritual influence of one of his dying patients. Though not of record, it may well be that the death of his own father in 1830 disposed his heart to respond to the call of Christ. Certain it is that in the early thirties he gave up his medical practice and went to the seminary with the intent of becoming a medical missionary.
That decade of the thirties was marked far and wide by a very deep and intense religious revival, which brought converts by the hundreds to a serious purpose of amendment of life and an open profession of faith. It is interesting to note that before that remarkable decade was over, one of the first-fruits of the evan- gelistic movement, in which John Clark had been a word of fire, was himself winning souls from the very pulpit that John Clark had occupied. For the young deacon, after a few months at Portland, saw his way clear to accepting the repeated call of Grace Church, and in April, 1836, he came, as he himself stipulated, for a year's trial. Strictly, being only a deacon, he was not at first Rector, though recorded as such in the minutes of the Vestry, for on the roll of Convention in June he stands as "Deacon, Minister of Grace Church." In January, 1837, it is on record that he is again elected Rector at the original salary of $1,250. This salary in 1840 was raised to $1,500 by an increase of the tax on the pews from seven percent to eight percent.
Dr. Vinton's rectorship was a fruitful one both for himself and his Church. In a short time he had checked the falling off that had accompanied the loss of so powerful a personality as that of John A. Clark, with its consequent year of interregnum, and the parish had begun to make a steady advance. In his first formal report as rector, in 1837, Dr. Vinton deplores this loss of ground and
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especially the scanty contributions "to objects of religious benevo- lence" since, as he says, "it is a zeal for these which marks the pulse of piety in the Church, because it is the natural movement of a heart truly alive to the conviction that it is not its own, but is bought with a price. It is the languor of exhaustion and not of indifference which is excusable." And the next year he reports that such contributions are far greater than ever before, speaks of four Sunday Schools, "a new one in the South part of our city," and one for adult colored persons; he notes that nine or ten young men are training for the ministry, and "forty-seven persons have been confirmed to the church."
This reference to a Sunday School "in the South part of our city" that is, on Thayer Street between Arnold and John Streets, is of large significance, since out of that effort came St. Stephen's Church, admitted to the convention just ten years after Grace Church and drawing away from Grace Church a score of communi- cants and more than one of its very influential members. In the report of 1840 Dr. Vinton speaks of nearly twenty who up to that time had gone "to form the nucleus of St. Stephen's,"1 and of the probable loss of most of the colored communicants to strengthen the colored mission called Christ Church. He adds, "No minister ought to regret these declinations from the numbers of his church which are thus made the sources of new multiplication, when the mother of us all becomes equally the matron of a new and un- trained family."
Hardly had Grace Church recovered from the temporary loss in numbers involved in the starting of St. Stephen's, when it suffered a loss harder to bear with equanimity in the removal from Provi- dence of its Senior Warden and one of the leading spirits among its founders. In the fall of 1841 a letter was received from George S. Wardwell in Brooklyn,2 stating that his removal to that city necessitated his resignation of the office of Senior Warden.
The resignation of the layman who had been Senior Warden since its founding created a crisis that the young parish was not at the moment in a position to meet. It is interesting to note that thus early in the history of Grace Church a predicament
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