USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island Episcopalians 1635-1953 > Part 10
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On the opposite side of the city, in Darlington, St. Martin's has risen to diocesan importance. When William Townsend, then a graduate student at Harvard, took the little Mission over in 1922, he was told that it was a place without prospects. The truth was that it had been the part-time cure of a godly but dictatorial Churchman, who had not appealed to the constituency. Three years later William Townsend, Ph.D., as he had become, married and moved in as Vicar and, shortly after, as Rector. The parish grew, particularly in the Sunday School, in spite of limited quarters in the old Potter and Johnston restaurant. In 1933 the present writer urged Dr. Townsend to put an $18,000 building fund into a basement for a new church. This, being also in his mind, was promptly done, and some $20,000 in future building costs was saved. A dozen years later the present basilica-type church was completed, and shortly, paid for. St. Martin's in 1950 had 686 communicants and 237 in its Church School, running a close second ·in this respect to big St. Paul's. Dr. Townsend died in April, 1953, and is buried in the church- yard. William Shumaker is now rector.
The fifth and smallest parish in Pawtucket is the Church of the Advent, located near the Providence line in a neighborhood that has seen its best days. James E. Barbour was the virtual creator of the parish and its rector for a generation. In 1950 the Advent still had 310 communi- cants, though its Church School of 52 was only a shadow of what it once had been. It is the Anglo-Catholic parish of the city, H. R. Carter, registrar of the Diocese, being its rector.
St. George's, Central Falls, has had a fine history. In 1950 it had 1,221 communicants, and was thereby the third largest parish in the Diocese. Its growth from 1874 has paralleled the growth of Central Falls from a residential village to the most thickly populated city in the country, its one square mile replete with varied industry. St. George's was fortunate in three of its earlier rectors, Arthur and Lucian Rogers and Samuel M. Dorrance, who went on after some years each to honors elsewhere. Its greatest growth, however, was in the five-year rectorship of Willis B. Hawk, who brought up the number of communicants from 500 to 1,000. Hawk also, in 1923, built the present beautiful church. Soon after its completion he died of appendicitis in his fortieth year, and was buried in the churchyard. His successors, William E. Dowty and Henry P. Krusen have slowly inched the parish up to its present number of 1,221 communicants. Neighborhood conditions, with a Protestant exodus and consequent drop in the Sunday School, would seem to make St. George's future less bright than its past. It, too, is ringed about with near competitors of its own faith.
Christ Church, Lonsdale, still retains its numbers, although children are half as numerous as in the past. It had in 1950 711 communicants and 180 in Church School, this last less than half of the number of seventy-five years ago. At one time, in the long, golden rectorship of Albert M. Hilliker, Christ Church Sunday School consistently led the
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Diocese in Lenten offerings. Since then St. Paul's, Pawtucket, has almost invariably captured the flag. Philip P. Kierstead has given this old parish a new lease of life.
St. John's, Ashton, except for money, is but a fraction of what it was in the forty-two-year rectorship of William Pressey, from 1893 to 1935. Mr. Pressey was Secretary of Convention for many years and served on many Diocesan Boards and Committees, particularly those on Christian Education and Social Service.
The situation of little Emmanuel Parish in Manville is even less good. Its fine colonial church and excellent rectory are located in the valley, off the main road. The town is now eighty percent French Canadian, ten percent other Roman Catholic, and only ten percent Orthodox and Protestant. Emmanuel Church, like St. John's, with which it is linked, needs to reach out again into the surrounding country, where new houses are continually springing up.
A notable rectorship and the longest one in its parish history, was that of Albert Crabtree from 1895 to 1907. He built the rectory. In his time and in that of Eric F. Toll, his near successor, Emmanuel Church saw its best days. These also were the times when important business men like the Watermans, Voses, and Handys took an active interest in the parish. Thomas H. Handy, for instance, was for sixty years a Ves- tryman and Warden, as well as active in diocesan affairs and a generous supporter of St. Andrew's School. Everett Vose served on the Vestry for over fifty years, as did Walter Collings; once Office Manager for the Manville Jencks Company. These men are now gone and have left no comparable successors. The parish has only half the communicants and a fifth of the Sunday School it once had. Nevertheless elements of hope still remain.
In 1833 St. James was the first church of any creed in the mill village of Woonsocket. Its success in a semi-Pagan environment was instan- taneous. In its one hundred and twenty years St. James has lived through many changes. It has seen an influx into the city of English, Irish, Scandinavians, Italians, French Canadians, Poles, Ukranians, Greeks, Roumanians and Jews (who have two synagogues), and a few others. Besides several enormous French Churches, there is a flourishing Irish Catholic Church, an Italian one, a Polish and a Ukranian one, besides a Ukranian Orthodox parish of some size, Greek and Roumanian Ortho- dox groups, as well as a Polish National Catholic congregation.
Protestantism is represented by Episcopal, Congregational, Uni- versalist, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Quaker and Nazarene congre- gations. Woonsocket thus produces as many varieties of religion as it does woolens and worsteds. Of these last churches, St. James is much the largest, with 666 communicants, including those of its parochial mission of St. Andrew's two miles away to the northwest in Fairmount. Although St. James, like most other parishes of the Diocese, has only half the Sunday School (152) it once had, it is bravely holding the fort amid the lapping waves of Romanism.
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STATISTICS OF THE CHURCH IN THE BLACKSTONE VALLEY 1850 - 1950
COMMUNICANTS
CHURCH SCHOOL PUPILS
CONTRIBUTIONS
PLACE
PARISH
DATE 1850
1875
1900
1925
1950
1850
1875
1900
1925
1950
1900
1925
1950
1 Ashton
St. John's
1868
48
223
222
160
....
145
204
137
55
$ 1,688.36
$ 3,093.19
$ 4,296.26
2 Pawtucket
St. Paul's
1816
200
253
517
1085
1968
213
236
543
280
256
4,859.83
31,493.00
50,314.94
3 Pawtucket
Trinity*
1845
180
191
514
494
161
170
320
132
1,934.31
7,240.86
10,945.71
4 Pawtucket
Good Shepherd
1884+
71
228
516
637
30
222
288
99
3,045.38
8,848.21
24,283.12
5 Pawtucket
Advent
1894
121
306
319
145
187
55
2,071.46
4,748.56
7,388.86
6 Pawtucket
St. Luke's
1914
451
524
150
129
5,337.78
9,483.08
7 Pawtucket
St. Martin's
1918
194
686
165
237
3,254.69
10,114.25
8 Central Falls
St. George's
1872
65
200
950
1213
84
220
353
170
2,548.02
17,724.65
18,643.66
9 Lonsdale
Christ
1834
98
276
248
676
711
202
370
304
375
179
2,687.61
13,225.60
21,438.21
10 Manville
Emanuel
1835
27
47
94
113
57
80
65
102
42
17
1,848.07
4,405.25
2,421.54
11 Woonsocket
St. James
1832
115
210
530
556
666
156
210
373
275
152
5,664.34
12,244.91
19,268.21
Totals
440
1150
2357
5360
7435
651
1296
2283
2572
1481
$26,327.38
$111,616.70
$178,597.21
...
* In Massachusetts until 1863
f Date of union with Convention
Two outstanding rectors of the past were William S. Chase, an ardent prohibitionist, later prominent as a rector in Brooklyn, and Ben- jamin P. Talbot. Mr. Chase was less successful in keeping the French and Irish of Woonsocket away from liquor than he was in extending the Church. He founded two missions, besides St. Andrew's, in East Woon- socket and Slatersville. Both were given up in times of textile depres- sion. St. John's, Slatersville, for instance, lost 26 out of 36 communicants when its mill closed down. Dana F. Kennedy is the present active rector.
So much for the growth of the Church in the Blackstone Valley. It now has there some eight thousand communicants, more than the whole Diocese of Vermont. The Blackstone Valley bids fair to remain a bul- wark of Anglicanism for many years to come.
VII THE CHURCH IN NORTHWEST RHODE ISLAND
The earliest beginnings of the Church's work in northwest Rhode Island were in the then flourishing agricultural town of Johnston. Services were held early in Bishop Henshaw's episcopate in such centers as Rock- ville (now Manton), Simmonsville and Stony Brook. Finally, the work became concentrated at Manton, where the first St. Peter's Church was built and diocesan status accorded in 1847. A few years later the present village Gothic Church of stone was erected at the cost of $4,500. In 1936 it was gutted by fire and beautifully restored for about $25,000. The present replacement value would be, perhaps, $100,000.
Despite its promising start, the parish languished for over twenty years, until it received a new lease of life under Samuel H. Webb and Thomas H. Cocroft, the ardent missionary rector of the Church of the Messiah in Olneyville. The golden era of the parish then came in the long rectorship of Alvah E. Carpenter from 1902 on. The present com- modious parish house, for instance, dates from his early days. Since bis time, short rectorships and a growing Italian population have retarded parochial development. In the recent rectorship of Charles M. Hall the parish has, however, begun once more an upward turn. Suburban developments along its outer edges promise some hope for growth. In 1951 the parish reported 260 communicants, and 63 children in Church School.
St. Thomas Church, Greenville, came into existence in 1850 when the present church, then with a Gothic spire instead of the present tower, was built at a cost of $4,200 on land given by Resolved Waterman, the long-time Senior Warden of St. Stephen's, Providence. Thirty years later he gave the land on which the spacious rectory now stands. Of the original cost of the church, $1,400 was raised locally. Bishop Henshaw
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gave $1,400 out of a legacy to the Diocese from Samuel Larned, and the remaining third was secured by a mortgage, scon liquidated.
The Reverend James Eames, an indefatigable missionary, who, in six years covered 10,000 miles by horse and on foot, made St. Thomas Church his center. Thence he worked out into Burrillville, Centredale, Georgiaville, and even Valley Falls. After his call to Concord, New Hampshire, the outlying work went under and St. Thomas Parish wan- dered nearly forty years in the wilderness. Lay readers and clergymen followed each other in quick succession, finding prospects rather dismal. However, a faithful few, with help from the Diocese, kept the church open and the costly fabric in repair. Before the turn of the century, however, the Reverend James Colwell, a former rector of St. Stephen's in Providence, had a fruitful ministry. He built the major part of the parish house, to which Irving Evans, twenty years later, added the present kitchen and hallway.
After Mr. Colwell's death half a dozen clergymen and a couple of lay readers served the parish. The first upward turn began in 1923 with the ordination of Irving A. Evans. After his call to the large parish in Lons- dale, George L. Fitzgerald was Vicar for nine years. In his dav the communicant list was considerably increased, as well as the Church School, while the parish budget and missionary quota was maintained, even during the difficult days of the depression. After two short suc- ceeding vicarates, in 1942, Doctor Dudley Tyng, then rector of Emmanuel Church, Manville, was elected rector also of St. Thomas Church. This arrangement made possible the giving up of diocesan aid. Soon there- after an electronic organ was purchased, the dilapidated interior of the church renovated, and other improvements made in church, parish house and rectory. In 1947, a $4,000 legacy enabled the parish to move the parish house, connect it to the church and provide a good basement underneath. Even this addition to the plant is proving insufficient for the needs of a fast expanding neighborhood and parish.
In 1951, in the three-year incumbency of the Reverend J. Arthur Budding, St. Thomas finally became a self-supporting parish, realizing the intermittent dreams of the previous century. In 1952 it reported 288 communicants, 145 pupils in Church School, and a $6,500 budget. Walter Y. Whitehead became rector in 1953.
Long after the parishes at Manton and Greenville came St. Alban's, Centredale. Although services had been held in this neighborhood off and on for fifty years, it was not until the rectorship of James Colwell at Greenville that a Mission was firmly established. When an English woolen firm built a big mill at Greystone in 1904 and made the place into a Yorkshire village, the happy days of St. Alban's began. So great was the interest there that Edmund C. Bennett gave up his post at Greenville to concentrate on Centredale. In his long vicarate, St. Alban's drew abreast the two previous large missions of the Diocese, St. Andrew's and St. Thomas in Providence.
Since Mr. Bennett's death five vicars and rectors in twenty years have served at St. Alban's. The first was James M. Duncan, recently of Chi-
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cago and Washington, who gave the Mission a strong impetus and an Anglo-Catholic complexion. His four successors have walked steadily in his steps, with very few defections on the part of the people. In the incumbency of Albert C. Larned, in 1945, St. Alban's became a self- supporting parish. With the assumption of self-support, however, mis- sionary giving, as in similar cases, went backward. In 1952, St. Alban's had 372 communicants, 130 in Church School and a budget of $7,000. It has recently, under Nelson W. Mackie, completed a $20,000 Parish House.
Somewhat later than St. Alban's, St. James on Fruit Hill, North Providence, took its rise. Formerly known as the Church of the Holy Spirit, this flourishing parish still uses, in enlarged and beautified shape, an ex-Baptist Chapel. There were the usual ups and downs for many years. Finally, in 1936, the Diocese seriously contemplated shutting the Mission down. This advertised action so aroused the constituency that erelong, with the sale of the old Church in Providence, St. James became an independent parish, with the largest Church School and communicant list in this area! This result is largely of the last ten years, in the rector- ships of Arthur M. Dunstan and C. Lennart Carlson. St. James had, in 1951, 358 communicants and 137 in Church School and a budget of about $8,000. It is thus a lap ahead of the parishes at Manton, Greenville and Centredale.
The eight Missions of this region listed in 1951 about 530 communi- cants and over 300 in Church School. Their combined budgets totaled about $13,000, exclusive of diocesan aid. Three of these Missions, namely, the ones at Pascoag, Thornton and Harris, are old and seem to hold only limited possibilities. Four new Missions, those at Foster, North and South Scituate, and Coventry seem destined to grow considerably, even if self-support lies in the distant future.
The antecedents of the Mission in Pascoag go back nearly a century to the labors of James Eames of Greenville. First, Mapleville had services and a Sunday School. These lapsed. Later a congregation was gathered and a small Church built in Harrisville. These mouldered and dis- appeared after a number of years. Finally, services held in Pascoag brought a response from the English mill workers of the town. About 1900 an abandoned Methodist Church was bought and moved to the present location, and soon after the neighboring rectory was purchased. Since that time the Mission has advanced when it has had a resident Vicar, and usually has done less well when it did not. In one of these last instances, the Sunday School disappeared and has only recently been restored. With another resident Vicar, however, the Mission is looking up once more. Financially, the improved economic status of the people has made possible many repairs, particularly in the middle forties, when Dr. C. Lennart Carlson, a native of the town, was Vicar. Burrillville still has a considerable Protestant population and is profiting from the sub- urban influx from the cities. The work at the State Sanitarium at Wallum Lake, if combined with that of the parish, would give a competent priest an indefinitely large and rewarding field. G. Lucien Stone is the present vicar.
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St. Andrew's, Harris, likewise dates its beginnings back to the times of Bishop Henshaw. Though near-by St. Philip's, Crompton, early became a settled parish, the location and nature of the work in the villages farther north oscillated considerably. Finally, from 1889 on, the parish of St. Andrew's, Harris, had a legally incorporated and slowly rising career. The present total of 138 communicants and 34 Church School children has been exceeded, to be sure, in times past, but financially this aided parish seems on the upgrade. What St. Andrew's has lost in constituency through the heavy influx of French people into the Paw- tuxet Valley villages has been balanced by new people moving into the near-by country, at least in part.
The same is less true of the once big Mission of the Holy Nativity in Thornton. Originally a part of the missionary enterprise of Thomas H. Cocroft at Olneyville, the Church passed for many years into the care of St. Stephen's parish in Providence. In 1917 Frank H. Hallett, a former teacher at Brown, became priest-in-charge. Father Hallett, a man of intense evangelistic and pastoral zeal, roamed all over western Rhode Island making calls. But his prejudice against all forms of Church organization (he regarded Vestries, Sunday Schools, Choirs and Guilds as unspiritual, if not semi-Satanic enterprises ) inevitably took its toll, in addition to displacements caused by the Italian influx. For Thornton once swarmed with English working folk. The first cricket club in Rhode Island, for instance, sprang up there, after the coming of the Saturday afternoon holiday. Where, however, Englishmen once played cricket and soccer on Saturdays, Italians now play Sunday soccer and baseball. The erstwhile 150 children in Church School have shrunk to 25, though the 100 communicants are still two-thirds those of yesterday. The Church of the Holy Nativity from 1947 to 1953 has been advantageously linked up with St. David's, Meshanticut Park. It is now conjoined with the Messiah Parish in Providence.
Of brighter promise than these older missions at Pascoag, Thornton and Harris are the three new missions in the rapidly growing towns of Foster and Scituate, namely, Trinity, North Scituate, St. Timothy's, South Scituate, and the Church of the Messiah, Foster. These date from 1943, 1944 and 1948 respectively.
In 1943, Dr. Dudley Tyng, then rector in Manville and Greenville, found some forty Church families in the town of Scituate. The war shortage of gasoline seemed to warrant services in that area, so a hall was hired and the local Episcopalians and would-be ones were invited to assemble. The response was so hearty that, by the end of 1943, Trinity Mission, North Scituate, became fully organized and accepted by the Diocese. A vigorous Woman's Auxiliary, a flourishing Men's Club, which raises hundreds of dollars a year by its suppers, and a large Sunday School have marked the ten years of the Mission's history. When Dr. Tyng retired in 1947, several thousand dollars had been gathered from within and from without the parish for a church building. This became a reality two years later, with the active prosecution of new work which character- ized the administration of Bishop Bennett. By the efforts of Archdeacon Parshley, a lovely rustic church of cinder block faced with stone, with
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an ample basement, was built among the pines on the borders of the Scituate Reservoir, half a mile west of North Scituate village. Trinity in 1952 reported only about 120 communicants, though many people still attached to city parishes attend there. Thus on Easter Day, 1953, 164 Communions were made. The Church School is nearly as large as the communicant list, something quite unusual in the Episcopal Church. In 1950 the Mission raised about $3,000 for current uses. As of 1952, the debt on the Church building was $8,500 carried by the Mission, and $2,800 carried by the Diocese. Previously the work of the Men's Club had provided an electronic organ, while the pews and various church furnishings were gifts of the membership and their friends. Walter M. Hotchkiss has been vicar since 1951.
Five miles to the southwest of Trinity Church and twelve miles from Providence, is St. Timothy's, located at the junction of the Plainfield Pike and Westcott Road. Some twenty years ago Father Hallett set up here among the trees a portable chapel 38 feet by 21. There he conducted afternoon services for many years, finally deeding the building to the Diocese. In 1944, Dr. Tyng reopened the chapel, beginning with two communicants and twelve children in Church School. Since then both these numbers have increased to over forty. By the hard work of the Women's Group, by the generosity of the local Bellem and Owens families, and by a $1,500 loan already partly repaid, extensive additions and improvements have been made to the building. These improvements have cost about $4,200, of which $850 only remained, as of November 1953, in loans underwritten by the Diocese. For seven of the nine years of its existence St. Timothy's has been without expense to the Diocese, owing to the volunteer assistance of Dr. and Mrs. Tyng, and of a faithful lay-reader, Dr. Joseph C. Burrows.
More recent than St. Timothy's, and about the same in size, is the Church of the Messiah in Foster. Founded by Archdeacon Parshley in 1948, this Mission has been conjoined first with North Scituate and later with Christ Church, Coventry, the Diocese carrying most of the mis- sionary's salary and house rent. The little Community house, in which the Mission began its career, has been purchased and much beautified within. Some forty communicants and forty odd children are on the Church list. The debt on the building, underwritten by the Diocese, was, in May of 1953, a little over $2,800.
Fifteen miles to the south of the Church of the Messiah, is Christ Church, Coventry Center. This, and St. Elizabeth's, Canonchet, are the sole survivors of the old rural work in which Bishop Perry took so much interest, and on which the Diocese spent so much money. For with the years, Roaring Brook Farm, Austin Priory, Greene, Arcadia, and Trinity Church, Richmond Mills, have all succumbed to change and time. Christ Church, Coventry, after thirty years, is a sturdy relic. Its constituency, likewise, has now become more suburban than rural. As of 1952, it had 128 communicants, 57 in Church School, and had 67 Communions on Easter. The little church, placed on a high elevation above route 117,
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4
has been nicely decorated in memory of the Rev. George Holcomb, rural missionary, who died at the Hopkins Hollow Chapel one winter afternoon in 1934, after shoveling a path to the highway. Its crying need is a new parish hall, for which the Diocese is prepared to borrow $10,000, when- ever parochial circumstances justify it. Money is the Mission's weakest point. It is the only church of any kind-within four miles.
Farthest south in this western area of the State is St. Philip's, Cromp- ton, or West Warwick as it is now designated, situated on the lower Pawtuxet. It was founded by Bishop Henshaw in 1845, antedating the parishes in Manton and Greenville by several years. Unlike theirs, its history has been of a relatively even tenor. Several men, prominent later elsewhere, have served this parish. Its longest rectorship, that of the Rev. Hervey B. Marks, came to an end in 1945. Although originally a mill-village parish, St. Philip's, caters increasingly to a suburban and commuter constituency. Its income in 1952, $12,000, was the largest of any parish in this area. It then reported 313 communicants and 143 children in Church School. John P. Beauchamp is rector.
Northwest Rhode Island from Pascoag to Crompton and Coventry thus contains five self-supporting parishes and eight missions with a total of 2,156 communicants, 793 Church School children and contributions of $51,000. Seven full-time clergymen and two others on part-time work here. Strange as it may seem, this semi-rural section of the smallest State in the Union has as many Church people and more Church School children than the heavily aided domestic missionary jurisdictions in the sweeping spaces of Nevada or western Kansas.
VIII THE CHURCH IN SOUTHWEST RHODE ISLAND
In 1850 the Church in southwest Rhode Island, that is, in the area from Cranston and Warwick to Narragansett Pier and Westerly, had just five parishes. There were but 326 communicants, as compared with the 849 in Newport and Bristol Counties, the 742 in Providence, and the 440 in the Blackstone Valley. Only northwest Rhode Island, from Pascoag to Crompton, with 81 communicants scattered through five small missions, was weaker.
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