USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 70
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The court dismissed appeals from final decrees in the Superior Court dismissing the bills, thus sustaining the Bishop .; The complainants previously had carried appeals through ecclesi- astical procedure to Rome, without success, however. On the dismissal of the civil suits in equity, the complainants were formally excommunicated for violation of canon law, the declara- tion of excommunication having been withheld, though actually in effect earlier, until the termination of the procedure in the civil courts, lest it be misinterpreted inadvisedly as intended to affect the parties or to prejudice their cause. In February, 1929, the excommunicants took advantage of the conditions for reinstatement announced by Bishop Hickey, made public retraction of error, and were reinstated to membership in the Catholic Church. The reconcilia- tion was complete. As further indications of the restoration of good feeling throughout the diocese the Bishop, returning from an ad limina visit to Rome, brought appointments as Mon- signori for pastors of French churches, and decorations of the Church Order of St. Gregory for Franco-American laymen. The French Government bestowed the star of the Legion of Honor on two Franco-Americans.
*It is held ordinarily that a member of a society must exhaust methods and measures for relief within before appealing to judicial courts.
¡The Church Suits, 49 R. I. 269.
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TWENTIETH CENTURY CHURCHES-One hundred Baptist churches in Rhode Island in 1930 were organized in four associations known as Narragansett, Providence, Roger Williams and Warren, and were united in an annual state convention. The membership of Baptist churches, including a few small churches not affiliated, was reported to the convention as 20.500, of whom nearly 16,000 were resident and active. The Sunday school enrollment was reported as exceeding 18,600. Of the 100 Baptist churches, ninety were supplied with pastors ; the num- ber of ordained pastors in service was eighty, this count excluding assistants and pastors emer- itus, unordained pastors and ministers serving more than one church, the last being counted only once. The state convention was dealing in 1930 with a "rural church problem," involving loss of supporting membership, which was ascribed to the migration of young people from country to city, by aiding rural churches financially and by combining neighboring rural churches under one minister. The Baptists were aggressive in missionary work among immi- grants and in supporting foreign missions. The twentieth century had witnessed a rapproche- ment among Baptists, without, however, a surrender of doctrinal distinctions within the denom- ination. The state convention was chartered in 1826; it accomplished, early in the twentieth century, a union for common purposes of two wings of the denomination. The Baptist attitude toward further church unity was indicated in the convention's answer to a message of greeting sent by the Episcopal convention, thus: "With pleasure we recognize the growing spirit of fellowship and good will that is manifested on the part of our great religious bodies through- out the land and around the world. It is increasingly evident that Christian people are far more tolerant, fraternal and Christlike than were some of their fathers in past generations. While this may not signify the surrender of religious convictions nor the abandonment of foundation truths, it does indicate that believers today are more willing to respect the beliefs of their neigh- bors and the principles for which they stand. And, while we do not see that church union is near or perchance is desirable, we do appreciate this willingness to respect and honor the sacred convictions of other men and to grant them the right to interpret God's truth and human obliga- tions according to the best light we have. We are fully persuaded that this spirit of unity is acceptable in the sight of our common Lord, and that it will go far toward hastening the coming of His kingdom among men in all lands. This kind and fraternal message brought to us from the Protestant Episcopal convention by one of their own number we heartily appreciate, and return to them our sincere best wishes for success in all the efforts they are making to honor God in the important service committed to their hands." Besides the Baptist churches united in the state convention, Seventh Day Baptists maintained churches, principally in the southwestern section of Rhode Island ; and five Six Principle Baptist churches had 125 members. Otherwise the Baptist churches were so distributed in 1930 that almost every town in Rhode Island had at least one Baptist Church.
The Episcopal Church in Rhode Island in 1930 maintained fifty-four parishes, of which eleven were rated as missionary parishes, besides twenty-two chapels or mission stations. The clergy included the Bishop, eighty-two priests and six deacons; there were fifty-two lay readers. The membership was stated in various ways as 12,600 families. 23,000 communicants, 24,500 confirmed persons, 37,750 baptized persons. The churches and chapels provided seats for 21,000 persons. Sunday school membership was almost 10,000. Bishop McVickar, who died in 1910, was succeeded by Right Reverend James DeWolf Perry, a descendant of the Rhode Island Perry and DeWolf families. Bishop Perry was elected in 1930 as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of America. St. John's Church in Providence was transferred in 1929 to Bishop Perry to become the Cathedral of St. John. The Bishop organized St. Dun- stan's College for sacred music. The Episcopal Church had been aggressive in establishing and supporting missions in Rhode Island, but had not penetrated the distinctly rural western and southwestern towns. Among immigrants it had appealed particularly to members of national Episcopal churches in Europe.
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The Methodist Episcopal Church maintained thirty-two churches in Rhode Island in 1930, all of which except one at Little Compton were included in the Providence District of the New England Southern Conference. The membership of the churches was reported as 7500, of whom 6200 were resident and active. The enrollment of pupils in Sunday school was 5050. The strength of the denomination in Rhode Island lay in the cities of Providence, Pawtucket Newport, Central Falls and Woonsocket, in the town of East Providence and in the Pawtuxet Valley. Of other churches using the name Methodist but not affiliated with the Conference, there were Primitive Methodist churches in Newport and Providence, and six African Meth- odist Episcopal churches in the same cities.
Thirty-two Congregational churches were affiliated with the Rhode Island Congregational Conference in 1930. The membership of Congregational churches was reported as 10,300, and the Sunday school enrollment as 6400. Overtures for the merger of Congregational churches and churches of the denomination called Christian had proceeded so far in 1930 that delegations from Christian churches were seated in the Congregational Conference, and the yearbook of the conference carried a "list of Congregational and Christian ministers in Rhode Island." Two Christian churches-the church of Westerly and the Elmwood Christian Church in Providence -were represented by delegates. Two other Christian churches-at Clayville and Rice City- were reported as served by one minister. From two others-Moosup Valley and South Ports- mouth-no delegates or reports were received. The merger was accomplished and announced at a conference in November, 1930. Seven Congregational churches were reported as supplied by ministers of other denominations.
The Friends maintained their meetings in Newport, Providence, Woonsocket and Central Falls in 1930, the last continuing the old South Smithfield meeting. Other denominations with churches in Rhode Island in 1930 included Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, Lutheran, Pente- costal, Presbyterian, Scientist, Swedenborgian, Unitarian, Universalist, and branches of Euro- pean national churches and orthodox churches in Greece, Syria and Ukrania. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Providence rises conspicuously on Prospect Hill, with dome and lantern visible over a wide area. There are, besides, denominational, interdenominational, and non- denominational missions, and the stations of the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America. The increasing population of Hebrews had been paralleled by a corresponding number of con- gregations, synagogues and temples, orthodox and reformed, of which there were a dozen in Providence, besides those at Newport, Pawtucket and Woonsocket.
Radio adopted the church to popularize Sunday broadcasting, but the church was as quick, almost, to grasp an opportunity to use radio as a means whereby to convey religious messages to people who do not attend church services on Sunday. Religious programs have been extended from sermons and church music to instruction periods and broadcasting in which doctrines are explained and questions are answered. Radio preaching and teaching, though conciliatory in form because addressed to a multitude of listeners assumed to include a great variety of opinion and belief or disbelief, has been remarkably clear and logical in presentation, thus to insure understanding of the doctrines expounded.
CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS MAINTAINED BY CHURCHES-The independence of churches generally among Protestant denominations has not fostered the development and maintenance of charitable institutions, although church members have given liberally for charity, and few churches have not a committee or an auxiliary organization that dispenses alms in some form. The Episcopal Church, an exception to the general rule because of its thorough diocesan organ- ization and discipline, and because also of generous endowments for charity, maintains St. Andrew's Industrial School, for boys, in Barrington; St. Mary's Home for Children, in North Providence, which replaced St. Mary's Orphanage, formerly located in East Providence ; and St. Elizabeth's Home, in Providence. Hebrews maintain a home for the aged, an orphanage and a hospital, all in Providence.
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The Catholic Charity organization is commensurate with the resources of the diocese and the number of members of the Catholic Church in Rhode Island. A Catholic Bishop, at his consecration, is pledged by solemn vow to care for the poor; and Catholic charitable institutions have had an intensive development in Rhode Island because of the zeal of successive Bishops. Bishop O'Reilly founded St. Aloysius Orphan Asylum, housing it first in a small wooden building on Claverick Street. A larger building was completed and occupied in 1856, and in 1862 the orphans were removed to a building on the present estate on Prairie Avenue in Provi- dence, erected under the direction of Bishop McFarland. Two wings were added to the build- ing by Bishop Harkins in 1889, and a later addition provided a separate school building, with classrooms and shops for manual training. The institution was chartered as Rhode Island Cath- olic Orphan Asylum, and is in charge of the Sisters of Mercy.
The success achieved by Joseph Banigan as a captain of industry in rubber was no more remarkable than his generosity; while other institutions, including Brown University, were beneficiaries of his estate, Catholic charities received most. His last act as a business man was signing a contract for the construction at his expense of a building for a Catholic charitable institution. His will carried legacies for the institutions he had assisted in his lifetime, and his daughter, Mrs. Alice Banigan Sullivan, was generous also, particularly with gifts as memorials of her father and her mother, Mrs. Margaret Holt Banigan. Joseph Banigan built for the Little Sisters of the Poor the four-story brick building at Woodlawn in Pawtucket known as the Home for the Aged of the Little Sisters of the Poor ; the Banigan gifts to the institution amounted to $160,000. St. Vincent de Paul Society, lay members of which anticipated genera- tions ago what is now called "social service," by assisting their pastors to investigate appeals for aid and in adapting charity to curing poverty, undertook in 1892 to support an infant asylum, which was located for a time in a house on Davis Street in Providence. Joseph Banigan donated $22,500 in 1895, the purchase price of an estate of seven acres on Regent Avenue in Providence, and left the Infant Asylum a legacy of $25,000. A new building in charge of the Sisters of the Divine Providence, was opened in 1898. Villa St. Rose, at Greenville in Smithfield, was acquired through the initiative of Bishop Hickey, as a country annex for the Infant Asylum. Joseph Banigan built also, at a cost of $80,000, St. Maria's Home for Working Girls, located on Governor Street in Providence. The institution is conducted by the Sisters of St. Francis, and supplies board and home environment for working girls at reasonable rates. St. Margaret's Home for Working Girls, on Friendship Street in Providence, is conducted by the same order of nuns as an annex of St. Maria's Home.
The founding of St. Joseph's Hospital and of St. Francis Home for Consumptives is related in the following chapter. For boys of working age, many of them boys from the Orphan Asylum whose approach to youth and manhood suggested the desirability of another environ- ment, the house on Davis Street vacated by the Infant Asylum was opened as the Rhode Island Working Boys' Home. Later the boys' home was removed to the larger house on Park Street, occupied in 1930. This institution offers room and board and home life environment at rates commensurate with the earnings of boys. The directors have been the late Reverend James Ward and Reverend Martin Reddy ; zealous cooperating laymen included Andrew Martin and John J. Hoey, both deceased. Through their alertness opportunity was grasped to obtain by gift the Tower Hill House, once a summer hotel, overlooking Narragansett Pier. An association was organized, the Tower Hill House was renovated, and has been used since as a summer vaca- tion home for boys and girls, without discrimination because of race, color, or religion. Hun- dreds of boys and girls go annually in weekly relays to Tower Hill for a vacation.
When Bishop Harkins purchased the Eaton House on Eaton Street in Providence, it was anticipated that it might be remodelled as a residence for the Bishop, more retired from the bustle of the city and quieter than the diocesan residence on Fenner Street. Shortly afterward
R. I .- 65
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the Sisters of the Good Shepherd came to Rhode Island, and were assigned to the Eaton House temporarily. There they remained, and around it a group of buildings has been ercted for the institute conducted by the sisters. Patrick Carter of Providence built the institution on Pine Street in Providence known as Carter Day Nursery ; it is what the name indicates, besides being headquarters for the White Sisters whose charitable work consists of visiting and nursing the sick at home. St. Clare's Home in Newport, and the Holy Ghost Convent in Pawtucket, are day nurseries and stations for the White Sisters visiting the sick in those cities. Two other day nurseries are conducted in Providence in St. Ann's and St. Bartholomew's parishes.
Other Catholic charitable institutions in Providence are St. Raphael's Industrial School and St. Dorothy's Home. The latter is a social service station for immigrants landed in Provi- dence from ocean passenger ships. At Woonsocket the Catholic Church maintains two orphan asylums-St. Vincent de Paul Home and L'Orphelinat St. Francois-the latter French, and Hospice St. Antoine, a home for the aged ; and at Newport the Mercy Home and School, where the Sisters of Mercy care for eighty orphans.
The volume of the work in Catholic charitable institutions is suggested by the number of persons cared for in a single year. At the House of the Good Shepherd, 479 girls ; at two homes for the aged, 384; at Tower Hill House, almost 1000 children ; at five orphan asylums, 1502 dependent children ; at the Infant Asylum, 496 children ; at five day nurseries, 2283 children. The Catholic Church has not the almost $1,000,000 of endowment and funds with which one denomination in Rhode Island has been provided by generous well-wishers; the income of $1.000,000 would not support the Catholic charities. Until 1927 Catholic charities were sup- ported by voluntary gifts, by collections in churches, by the income of entertainments and fairs, by money solicited, and by money derived from miscellaneous sources. Bishop Hickey, in 1927, planned to budget the needs of Catholic charities for current maintenance and extension, and make a single annual appeal to Catholics principally, in a charity drive. The returns from four successive annual appeals, 1927-30, exceeded $300,000 in each instance, and the annual appeal has been established as the method approved. In the reorganization a diocesan bureau of chari- ties was established to correlate the work of Catholic charitable institutions. The Catholic charity drive in 1930 resulted in the collection of $320,000 for current maintenance and for continuing a program of new construction in the extension of institutions. Besides the long list of charitable institutions maintained by the Catholic Church, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, with a branch in every parish consisting of a small group of laymen, visits the poor in their homes and dispenses charity.
The Holy Name Society, Catholic, with one of its purposes suppressing profane swearing, promoting clean speech, and instilling reverence, enrolls in its membership thousands of Cath- olic men; on occasion 50,000 have marched in triennial parade. The Episcopal Church began in 1930 organization of the Fellowship of the Sacred Name.
CHAPTER XXXVI. MEDICINE AND SURGERY IN RHODE ISLAND.
EWPORT, largest Rhode Island town in the colonial period, was reasonably pro- vided with well-trained, competent physicians and surgeons from its settlement in 1639 to the beginning of the Revolution. The first Newport doctor was John Clarke, one of the original settlers who migrated from Portsmouth, and one of the founders of Rhode Island. His service to the colony included obtaining the Charter of 1663. While practicing his profession as doctor, he also preached in the Baptist Church at Newport. His life in Newport covered a quarter of a century, in two periods, from 1639 to 1651, and from 1663 to 1676, when he died. In the dozen years from 1651 to 1663, while he was engaged in a diplomatic mission to England to accomplish revocation of the commission of William Coddington as Governor and to obtain a charter to replace the Parliamentary Patent, which had become void with the Restoration of the Stuarts, he prac- ticed medicine in England. The town of Newport authorized Robert Jeffreys to "exercise the function of chirurgorie" in 1641. The General Assembly of 1664 granted to Captain John Cranston of Newport a license and commission "to administer physic and practice surgery throughout the whole colony," and dubbed the Captain "Doctor of Phissick and Chirurgery." Possibly and probably Captain Cranston had been relieving the sick and disabled, with little competition, during the absence of Dr. John Clarke from Newport, and the action of the General Assembly expressed a cordial wish that he should continue even after the return of Dr. Clarke. The probability that Newport had no doctor immediately after John Clarke's death is suggested by the offer made to Dr. Thomas Rodman of a grant of land as an induce- ment to settle in the town. Dr. Rodman accepted the offer, and practiced his profession in Newport forty-seven years, from 1680 to 1727. He was succeeded by his own son, Dr. Clarke Rodman, who probably was trained by his father. Another doctor, Norbert F. Vigneron, educated in France, settled in Newport in 1690, and practiced medicine until his death, nearly three-quarters of a century later, in 1764. Again there was a succession of father and son; Dr. Charles A. Vigneron, trained by his doctor-father, practiced medicine in Newport until 1772, when he died of smallpox. Dr. Clarke Rodman and Dr. Charles Vigneron, each one trained for the profession of medicine by an eminently educated father, were probably the earliest native-born Rhode Islanders who became doctors.
NEWPORT AS AN AMERICAN SALERNO-At the end of the first half of the eighteenth cen- tury Newport was the largest, wealthiest and most progressive town on the North Atlantic seaboard : it had become a metropolis, seat of an unusually profitable commerce, as well as a summer resort for the rich, particularly from Southern plantations. Four other doctors, all from Europe, settled in Newport at that period. Dr. John Brett, the time of whose coming was not recorded, was among those listed as giving books to Redwood Library in 1750. Dr. Thomas Moffat, a Scotch physician, was serving as librarian of the Redwood collection at the same time, and teaching medicine privately. Dr. John Halliburton, a fleet surgeon on a British frigate which visited Newport in 1750, resigned his commission in order to remain and marry a fair daughter of Newport. Dr. William Hunter, graduate of Edinburgh, who had served in the British army as a surgeon, also settled in Newport and founded a family that became famous for the beauty of its daughters. The group of European doctors was unusually brilliant, Hunter being an operative surgeon of distinction and an expert on anatomy.
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Like Dr. Moffat, he taught medicine, and lectured on anatomy in Newport in the winters of 1754-1756. Dr. Benjamin Mason, also educated in Europe, practiced medicine and trained medical students in Newport during the eighteenth century. There being no medical schools in America at the time, these doctors and others were not only practicing healing arts but also were laying a thorough foundation for continuance by training apprentices. The education was practical, as it was related for the most part to actual experience as the apprentice accom- panied the doctor on his round of visits to patients. Lawyers followed similar practices with reference to training youth before the establishment of law schools.
The story of medicine in Newport is not without similarity to the development at Salerno, out of which grew the university of medicine there under the patronage of the monastery of Monte Casino. It is probable that, had there been no serious disturbance of relations between Rhode Island and Great Britain, Newport would have become seat of a school or university of medicine. Brilliant physicians and surgeons as professors for a faculty were available; the town was prosperous and populous, and had a widespread reputation for salubrious climate. Two of the doctors from the British Isles, Halliburton and Moffat, opposed the liberal party in Rhode Island. Dr. Moffat was appointed a stamp collector in 1765, and thereupon his house was sacked by an angry mob of Newport patriots. He did not remove permanently, however, until 1772, when he had become convinced that Newport was not a desirable place of residence for a man who had incurred so much unpopularity. Dr. Halliburton left Newport when the British evacuated the town in 1779, like them never to return; he died in Halifax in 1807.
Dr. Jonathan Easton, Quaker, who began practicing medicine in Newport in 1765, con- tinued through and after the Revolution, and into the nineteenth century ; his name appears on the initial roll of members, or Fellows, of the Rhode Island Medical Society, which was incorporated in 1812. He was trained, probably, by one or more of the earlier Newport doc- tors. Though conservative in politics as became one of his religious convictions, he was pro- gressive in his profession, and was the first Rhode Island doctor to inoculate for smallpox, beginning in 1772. To Newport after the war came Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, who had been born in South Kingstown, and who, on the advice of Rev. James MacSparran, had been sent to Boston to be educated because his frail physique suggested that he never would be sturdy enough to be a farmer. Young Gardiner went to Europe eventually to study medicine, spend- ing eight years in the schools and hospitals of France and England. On his return he settled in Boston. Being a Tory, he fled to Nova Scotia at the beginning of the Revolution, abandon- ing his property, which was confiscated. After the war, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner returned to Rhode Island and settled at Newport; there he practiced his profession until his death in 1786. Radically different was the story of Dr. Isaac Senter, who came from New Hampshire to Newport before the war to study medicine with Dr. Moffat. Dr. Senter was an ardent patriot, enlisted in the American army in 1775, and was commissioned a surgeon. He accom- panied Christopher Greene and the Rhode Island troops on the winter expedition up the Kennebec River and across the divide into the valley of the St. Lawrence with Quebec as the objective, and was taken prisoner with Greene after the decisive battle. After the war Dr. Senter settled in Pawtucket, but soon removed to Newport. He had been only twenty-one in 1775, and he died in 1799, aged fifty-four, after a brilliant career as patriot and physician. Four of the articles in the first volume of transactions of the Philadelphia College of Physi- cians, published in 1793, were written by Dr. Senter, and he was an honorary member of medical societies in Edinburgh and London, as well as President of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati. With the passing of Dr. Gardiner and Dr. Senter at the end of the cen- tury, Newport still had the reliable Dr. Jonathan Easton and perhaps others, whose names have not been preserved. The town had not recovered its ante-bellum prosperity, though
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