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When on May 29, 1811, Alexander Viets Griswold became the first bishop resident in Rhode Island, the Episcopal Church there, in its four parishes, probably had no more than 200 communicants, with, possibly, a thousand attendants out of 60,000 people in the State. Roman Catholics, with the exception of a few settlers from France in Newport and Bristol, did not exist. The Baptists were the strong Protestant denomination. Even they, however, did not number more than 5,000 members, with a total constituency of, possibly 15,000 to 20,000. For only the "con- verted" were baptized and thus made members. To this number of 5,000 members might be added a thousand more professing the Six-Principle and Seventh Day Baptist views. The Congregationalists at this time seem to have had about one thousand members, the earliest available statistics, those of 1833, listing 1,750. When we add a few hundred more of various religious persuasions, of whom the Quakers would be the most numerous, the total Church membership of Rhode Island in 1811 would be about 9,000. Assuming that adherents and occasional attend- ants would bring the Church constituency to 30,000 or so, we should still find half of Rhode Island in the "pagan" category. Freedom of religion for many, in 1811 as in 1636, meant freedom to have no religion at all, at least of a public nature. One hundred and forty years later the propor- tion of religious membership, as we shall see, had considerably increased among the non-Roman 45 per cent of the population. Nevertheless, Rhode Island still remains a missionary field, though less so than in the opening days of the episcopate of Bishop Griswold.
("The quotations in this chapter have been taken from Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Vol. II, pp. 150 to 168, and from the Diocesan Journals of 1790 to 1811 ).
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CHAPTER II. The Episcopate of Alexander Viets Griswold 1811 - 1843
The Right Reverend Alexander Viets Griswold
I
Alexander Viets Griswold was born April 22, 1766, in Simsbury, Connecticut, the son of "Squire" Griswold, who owned some 500 acres on the Farmington River. The' Griswolds had been one of the earliest Massachusetts families to migrate to the Connecticut Valley area. The future Bishop was named Alexander Viets, after his mother's grand- father, an immigrant physician from Germany. His mother's brother was the Reverend Roger Viets, who, encountering the Episcopal Church at Yale, became a Churchman and won over his stern Presbyterian father to his new faith. Roger Viets was to play an important part in his nephew's life.
The comparative prosperity of the Griswold and Viets families was ended by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. As Churchmen, and as "neutrals", in that struggle, they suffered severely. Squire Griswold was forbidden to leave his farm and was overwhelmed with fines and levies. As a result, Alexander Griswold, a child prodigy in Latin, Greek, mathematics and science, had to give up his ambition to go to Yale. Roger Viets, however, invited him to come and work and study at his farm, with the idea of entering as a Senior, and becoming eventually a college teacher.
In 1785, when Alexander was nineteen, a crisis occurred in the affairs of both uncle and nephew. Roger Viets was called to a parish in Nova Scotia, where S. P. G. grants, no longer available in the new Republic, would enable him to resume the full work of the Ministry. Young Gris- wold was to go with him, but his engagement to a neighbor's daughter, named Elizabeth Mitchelson, posed a difficult problem. As the future Bishop expressed it in his Autobiography: "Separation to us was a painful thought. Yet we were too young to be married, as I was but a little past nineteen, and she more than two years younger than myself. Neverthe- less it was finally agreed that I should wholly relinquish my purpose of entering college, that we should be married, and that both should accompany my uncle's family to Digby, the place of his expected settle- ment in Nova Scotia. Our marriage accordingly took place the latter part of the year 1785.
"In 1786, my uncle visited and passed the summer in his new parish, returning in the autumn to Connecticut. In the meantime, my wife's parents had made inquiries concerning Digby and its climate; the result of which was such unfavorable views of the country that they were unwilling their daughter should go thither. I finally yielded to their feelings.
"Thus, a second time, was frustrated my plan of life. My early marriage, however imprudent in itself it may seem, was undoubtedly in the hands of Providence, the occasion of preventing my settlement in
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a foreign and unpleasant land ... I view the circumstance just recorded as a happy event, and desire to be duly thankful that my removal was prevented." **
The immediate result of this decision for the young couple was a decade of poverty and hard labor on their little farm, until Alexander Griswold's thoughts of the Ministry had become settled and his private preparation for it completed. In the meantime he had read widely in the law and also seriously considered becoming a business man. As he put it, ( Memoir p.58) :
"I had some serious thoughts of devoting my efforts to the acquisition of wealth; not doubting that, with my habits of economy and patient industry, I should probably succeed. These thoughts, however, held my mind for but a short period. The cultivation of literature was, in truth, what I most desired.'
"During these years of indecision, however, reading was not neglected; nor was I uninterested, or wholly unoccupied, in the affairs of religion and the Church. I became a communicant at the age of twenty, and was confirmed, with many others, on the occasion of Bishop Seabury's first visit to our parish. In the affairs of this parish, I was much consulted, and not a little engaged."
By dint of hard study, often by the light of the hearth after wife and children had gone to bed, Alexander Griswold felt ready, at twenty- eight, to offer himself as a candidate for Holy Orders. The Connecticut diocesan Convention of 1794 accepted him as such, and he became forth- with a licensed preacher. Within a year and a half he was ordained to the priesthood. This ordination was Bishop Seabury's last, just as Gris- wold's confirmation had been one of the bishop's first. The new priest received calls to three different parishes, but finally chose the poorest, the cure of Plymouth, Harwinton and Litchfield. "I accepted this last, partly because it was nearer the place where my family still resided, and where I had some property, which required my care; partly because I could, with greater propriety, resign that station, should circumstances ever render my removal expedient. The three parishes, embraced within this station, formed nearly an equilateral triangle, each being about eight miles distant from the others. The country between them was very hilly; and the roads, especially in the winter and spring, very bad. The duties, too, were very laborious. Visiting the people, attending funerals, and preaching lectures (at week-day cottage meetings), besides my Sunday services, kept me constantly on horseback. Carriages in that region were than scarce thought of; and the small wagon, since so common in New England, had not then come into use."
** Quoted from "Memoir of Bishop Griswold" by J. S. Stone. p.50-51.
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In these parishes Griswold labored for ten years at a salary of $300 a year, eking out his income by teaching District School in the winter, tutoring boys for college, and hiring out as a farm hand at 75 cents a day in the summer. Reportedly he often did the work of two men. Of these years he writes:
"No years of my life have been more happy than the ten which I passed in those three parishes. The people were mostly religious, and all comparatively free from vice. To me and mine they were exceedingly kind. With no one had I ever any manner of contention, or unkind dispute; nor did I learn that any one was ever opposed to me. My parishes all gradually increased. And when I left them, I had about 220 com- municants, the greater part of whom had come to the Lord's table under my ministry."
A vacation and sight-seeing trip was to be the cause of a momentous change. "In 1803, I was induced, in compliance with a pressing invitation, and in company with a friend, to visit Bristol, Rhode Island. I passed a fortnight there, preached two Sundays, and-the parish being vacant --- was pressingly requested to take charge of it. But the prospect of increased usefulness, or of any other advantage, did not appear to be such as to justify the change, cr to render my removal from my Litch- field parishes expedient. I therefore declined the offer. My desire, and indeed my intention, had been to remove further to the south. The State of Pennsylvania was my choice. I was well aware that, when the infirmities of age should come upon me, I should not be able to endure the labors incident to the station which I then held. I felt able, however, to continue them a little longer."
To resume: "I supposed I should hear no more from Bristol. But, about the middle of the following winter, to my surprise, one of their most respectable parishioners, Mr. William Pearse, a Warden of the church appeared at my house with still more pressing solicitations that I would take charge of that destitute parish; urging many reasons why it was my duty to consent to the change. This affected me very seriously, and there seemed to be in it a call of Divine Providence. In May, 1804, one year after my first visit there, I was in Bristol with my family." The physical agent in the removal was John De Wolf of Bristol, known because of his Arctic voyages, as "Northwest John". He sailed a schooner down Long Island Sound and up the Connecticut River to Hartford and transported the new rector, with his family and possessions, to their new home.
Unlike Litchfield County, Bristol was not a "godly" place. St. Michael's had only 25 communicants, but the salary was double that of his previous cure, $600 in place of $300. This sum came entirely from an endowment. When later, with increasing prices and a still increasing family, living costs rose, the Rector suggested to his Vestry that more could be done parochially for his support. The suggestion was ignored, and Griswold
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never renewed it, toiling the harder at school teaching and gardening, and paying every bill punctually, no matter what the immediate deprivation.
In the first seven years of the Griswold rectorship, the Church had been lengthened by 24 feet to accommodate greatly increased congrega- tions, but actual communicants had grown from 25 to only 40. In 1812, when the new bishop was absent on Episcopal visitations in other parts of New England, a great religious revival took place in Bristol. John P. K. Kenshaw, thirty years later Griswold's successor as Bishop of Rhode Island, then but a young theological student in the Bishop's house, describes the revival in a letter to him, in the language of the conversion- istic Evangelicalism which was then becoming active in the Episcopal Church. ( Memoir p.182).
"Since your departure the eagerness of your people in the good cause has apparently increased. There have been some new cases of awakening; some, who were slightly impressed, are now mourning in bitterness for their sins; and some, who were lately 'heavy laden' with the burden of guilt, have entered into the promised 'rest' and are rejoicing in the love of God .... At our last meeting a great number were present, ten or twelve of whom were dissolved in tears and crying for mercy. I have no doubt that the work of God is extending and increasing both in power and in purity. Nothing like fanaticism has been manifested among our people; but an earnest hungering and thirsting for the bread and the waters of life eternal. I cannot express my own impatience and the anxiety of the people for your return. I fear much, lest the good work should be checked among us for want of an experienced pastor to encourage and promote it. At a time like the present, when God is shedding forth His Spirit, opening the eyes of the blind, and extorting from the hearts of many the cry of the awakened jailer (What shall I do to be saved), I most sensibly feel my weakness and insufficiency for the work to which I am called . . . The revival has just commenced among other denominations of Christians, and they are extremely active. I fear they are using means to draw some from our congregation; and on that account your presence is more particularly needed."
When the Bishop returned in the autumn of 1812 to Bristol, he found that the fruits of the revival commenced at St. Michael's and spreading to other denominations, were not lost to the Church of their origin. He baptized 44 adults and confirmed about a hundred, the Methodists reaping an equal harvest. The communicant list of St. Michael's rose from 40 in 1811 to 148 in 1813. How did it happen that Griswold's first seven years in Bristol were, from the point of baptisms and confirmations, so relatively unfruitful, while the next two years saw the communicant list nearly quadrupled? The answer would seem to be a change in the man himself. He had come to Bristol with a whole collec- tion of sermons that went very well in Connecticut. Their strong asser- tion of Episcopalianism rejoiced the hearts of Churchmen smarting under Congregational arrogance. In Bristol, however, many of the non-Episco- palians who crowded to his services took offence. Though Griswold
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burned up his old sermons and preached differently, yet even then the magic change did not really come until after his consecration. Dr. Crocker of St. John's wrote later that it was at this period that Griswold seemed to become a different man, preaching Christ crucified with a new fervor and really melting men's hearts. The outward results in Bristol were the astounding number of adult baptisms and confirmations just mentioned. The thirty years' work of the Bishop of almost all New England thus began with a wonderful spiritual response in his own local pastorate.
II
THE EASTERN DIOCESE
The Eastern Diocese began its course with nineteen clergymen, four of them non-parochial. Of the fifteen active ones, Massachusetts had eight. Vermont had but one active priest, Abraham Bronson of Zion Church, Manchester. Maine had none, while New Hampshire possessed but three. Rhode Island had only three clergy, the Bishop at St. Michael's, Bristol; Nathan B. Crocker at St. John's, Providence; and Salmon Wheaton at Trinity Church, Newport. St. Paul's, Wickford, was to remain prac- tically leaderless for some years to come.
In the course of thirty-one years, Bishop Griswold ordained for the various parishes of the Eastern Diocese no less than 204 men to the diaconate or priesthood, or to both. These 204 included ten future bishops, two of them, J. P. K. Henshaw and Thomas M. Clark, being Bishop Griswold's next successors in the Rhode Island Episcopate.
In the same period, he confirmed 11,299 persons, of whom, as nearly as is traceable from imperfect records, 2,314 were from Rhode Island. The largest number confirmed was 1,212 in 1811, the first year of his Episcopate, and the next largest, in his last year (1841-1842), was 1,061, of which Rhode Island contributed 315.
The Eastern Diocese, though Bishop Griswold thought of it as an entity, was bound by its very nature ultimately to dissolve. For Church life tended to center around the Conventions of the various State dioceses rather than around that of the larger unit. In 1832 Vermont elected John Henry Hopkins as its Bishop. New Hampshire and Maine proclaimed their readiness to go their own way, but elected no bishop until after Griswold's death. Only Massachusetts, his later place of residence, and Rhode Island, remained fully in the Eastern Diocese until the end.
The few feeble and scattered parishes of 1811 had by 1842 become a hundred, distributed into five fully organized dioceses and ready to support four active bishops. In 1842 Manton Eastburn was chosen assistant bishop in Massachusetts and succeeded Griswold there shortly
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OLD ST. JOHN'S PROVIDENCE
thereafter. In 1844 Carlton Chase became bishop of New Hampshire. Maine was obliged to wait until 1847, when George Burgess, born in Rhode Island, became Diocesan.
This great development Griswold guided first from his parish in Bristol, and from 1829 to 1835 from St. Peter's, Salem. In this last year, when the annual income of the Episcopal endowment fund had risen to $900, he gave up parish work, at the age of seventy, and devoted his time to the increasing burdens of his episcopal office. Added to these were the duties of the Presiding Bishop of the Church, from 1836 on. In this capacity Griswold was chief consecrator for six out of eight new bishops.
One special concern of Bishop Griswold was theological education. He was vitally interested in the development of the General Theological Seminary in New York. This school, however, was rather distant, at that time, from the territory of the Eastern Diocese. Men who went there from New England were likely to be captured by parishes near New York. So, early in his Episcopate, he had various students, including his son Viets, preparing for the ministry in his own house. Later he promoted the plan to have a small Seminary in Boston. John Henry Hopkins, an old-time high Churchman, became assistant at Trinity Church, Boston, in order to head such an institution. His selection as Bishop of Vermont in 1832, however, put an end to the project. It was to be more than a generation before John Seely Stone, Griswold's biographer, became first Dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. From that School until the present day have come many of the leading bishops and presbyters of the Church. From 1900 on, a quarter to a third of the clergy of the Diocese of Rhode Island have been from that School, where the modern approach to the study of the Bible first began in our Church.
III
Fittingly, the remarkable growth of the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island began with the revival in Bristol described above. The first statis- tical report of the Rhode Island Diocese was not made, however, until 1813, when 148 of the 312 communicants listed were from St. Michael's, Bristol, 105 from Trinity, Newport, and 59 from St. John's, Providence. St. Paul's, Wickford, had neither parochial report nor parochial repre- sentation. A diocesan Committee was therefore appointed to bring a divided and discontented congregation back into the fold. The attempt was successful, though St. Paul's remained very small for many years. As late as 1835, it reported only 24 communicants.
The ups and downs of St. Michael's Parish in Bristol, both during and after Bishop Griswold's rectorship, illustrate the varying fortunes from decade to decade of both the new and the old parishes. Thus in 1823 the
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Bishop reported 25 baptisms, but no confirmations. Communicants were about 300, including some removed from town. "The congregation is but little, if at all, diminished. Piety and zeal appear to be increasing," said the Bishop in his Convention report. In 1827, the number had fallen to 170. A disastrous depression (in which the Bishop lost nearly all his savings ) had hit the town.
St. Paul's, Wickford, as already noted, grew but slowly. The annual reports of its rectors, when there was one, breathed alternately hope and pessimism. After 1835, however, the parish revived considerably. The 24 communicants of that date became 58 in 1842, only to level off again for many years.
Trinity Church, Newport, during this period, had a somewhat more even course of growth than did Bristol and Wickford. The rectorship of Salmon Wheaton, from 1810 to 1839, coincided largely with an increase of communicants from 115 in 1813 to 200 in 1842. In 1818, in imitation of the Sunday Schools started long before by Samuel Slater for his juvenile operatives in Pawtucket, Trinity's Sunday School came into being, "con- sisting of a male and female branch wholly confined to children of the poor. It is flourishing, consisting of about 90. Many have made progress in learning and in principles of Religion." Bishop Griswold, as of 1818 also, reported a flourishing school in Bristol. With these two schools, and the one in St. Paul's, Pawtucket, a new era in Church life in Rhode Island began. The 90 scholars of 1818 at Newport became 200 by 1842. In Bristol the 112 of 1828, when definite figures were first reported, became 280 in 1842. And so throughout the Diocese. Later recession in proportionate numbers can be ascribed, in part, to the rise of public schools and to the increasing restrictions on child labor in industry, the two making week- day schooling possible for the children of the poor.
St. John's, Providence, at this period and much later, enjoyed the fruitful rectorship of Nathan Bourne Crocker, who early in his ministry became a pronounced Evangelical. Sunday Schools ere long became the glory of St. John's. Crocker's missionary interest, likewise, made St. John's an early supporter both of foreign and domestic missions, and a mother of new diocesan parishes. Grace Church, Providence, was a child of St. John's; Crocker was its sponsor for admission to Convention in 1829. Grace Church, in turn, begat St. Stephen's, which, after a time, erected a church on Benefit Street near Transit. When, later, this flourishing parish built the present church in the horse-and-carriage neighborhood around Brown University, the Church of the Saviour arose. About 1915, this last parish united with little Calvary on the East Side to form the present St. Martin's. A colored congregation succeeded to the name and building, remaining there some fifteen years.
Long before these new developments, Crocker and St. John's had taken an active interest in establishing the Episcopal Church in the mill village of Pawtucket, which grew up around the fifty foot waterfall where, in 1790, Samuel Slater had built the first successful cotton mill in America. In the summer and autumn of 1815, Crocker, assisted by carriage loads
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of his parishioners, conducted afternoon Church services there in a Bap- tist Church, and later in a schoolhouse. In 1816 the Reverend John Blake organized an active parish. Samuel Slater was one of the first three com- municants and for a long time a Warden. His daughter Esther began the large endowment fund which St. Paul's now enjoys. In 1842 St. Paul's had 185 communicants and 180 Sunday scholars. The forty-nine years' rector- ship of another Evangelical, George Taft, begun in 1820, was as memor- able and missionary-minded as that of Crocker in Providence. Blake, however, had built the original wooden church in 1817, the cost, nearly $12,000, being met by the sale of pews. In 1901, in the rectorship of the Reverend Marion Law, the present stone church was erected, and later the Parish House. St. Paul's, with nearly 2,000 communicants, was in 1950, one of the five largest Episcopal parishes in New England and one of the twenty-five largest in the country. The Kingdom of Heaven is as a mustard seed.
St. Paul's, like St. John's, Providence, was also a Mother of Churches. St. James', Woonsocket (1832), Christ Church, Lonsdale (1834), and. Emmanuel Church, Manville (1835) all got people and encouragement from George Taft. In one of his annual reports to Convention he remarks that bad times in Pawtucket had made for the founding of three churches elsewhere, namely, the three just mentioned.
St. James', Woonsocket, was located near another steep waterfall, the "Thundermist", as Woonsocket means in the Indian tongue. Its success was immediate, with the result that Methodists and Baptists quickly followed the Episcopalians into the town.
Of these beginnings, the Reverend Joseph Brown gives a vivid descrip- tion in his 1833 report. "In May 1833, a new and beautiful edifice was completed. On the 16th of the same month it was consecrated by the Right Reverend A. V. Griswold. Its dimensions are 41 feet by 61- containing 58 pews. These were immediately sold, and let, and many more are wanted. There are about 20 communicants. There have been 6 bap- tisms -- 4 confirmed-11 marriages-18 funerals." A year later Mr. Brown reports: "On Sunday there are usually three services; a prayer meeting on Monday evening; a lecture on Wednesday evening; and the Monthly Concert. On Sunday the services are generously attended. Seriousness and solemnity are visible in the congregation, but we are led to hope that the time is not far distant when many will embrace the hope of everlasting life, and openly confess their Lord and Redeemer. Many who looked at the planting of this Church as a wild scheme, and ridiculed the idea of its success, have looked with astonishment at its rapid growth, and have now become deeply interested in her affairs. The sweet spot upon the banks of the Blackstone, where now stands this lovely retreat for the worshippers of God, about two years ago was covered with forest trees. God has given us His blessing; and now, from Sabbath to Sabbath, this sacred temple, half hidden among the lofty evergreens, is the resort of the weary, way-worn pilgrim, to gain refreshment from the bread of life, and mingle in the prayers and songs of Zion." In 1842, after two
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