USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Newport > Trinity church in Newport, Rhode Island; a history of the fabric > Part 8
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It was when the east wall was moved out toward the line of Spring Street that the apse was put on. This is segmental in plan and thus forms a curved recess in the wall on the inside (Figure 12). This was easy to manage with lath and plaster. On the out- side, however, the boarding could not be bent to the short curve and would have to be put on vertically. Even then, it would be difficult to bend the clapboards, and the square form was adopted to save time and labor.
A large window, familiar to all, was set in the east wall, with two small round windows, one in the north wall and one in the south. It may be that they were put in because the light of the east window had to be cut down with a curtain to spare the eyes of the congregation facing it. That the great east window was put in at this date, 1762, and not in 1726, is shown by the fact that its frame was of pine, while the other frames in the church, accord-
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
ing to a survey in 1859, were of red cedar. The section of the sill, also, was different.
The curved east wall of the chancel must have affected the altarpiece, which had been built to stand against a flat wall. It was probably, after the change, at first just set against the curved sur- face, with the two ends of the framework touching the plaster. When the royal arms were torn from it, the damage may have been so serious that, in the lean years which followed the Revo- lution, it was not thought wise to replace the woodwork. The Lord's Prayer and the Creed were, therefore, set in separate frames on one side, while the Commandments-on one canvas, as they had always been-were set in a plain frame in the center.
Lengthening of the church made necessary another "candle- stick," which was ordered to "be made in the ceiling" on July 25, 1763. There were now three "candlesticks" or "branches," which added to the dignity of the church, if not to the illumination. It must be remembered, however, that evening prayer was held at three o'clock in the afternoon in winter.
Appendices
Appendix A Spring Street and the Land at the East
THE history of the land at the east on which the addition to the church in that direction was built is, with the addition to the churchyard east of the old Carr lot, almost hopelessly obscure. There seem to be no deeds which account for it, and we only guess, with some plausibility, at what happened.
On John Mumford's map of Newport, made in 1712-1713, Mary Lane, Church Street and Frank Lane appear, with those names. They were added by a later hand or they must have been prophetic for, while James Brown, in 1716, bounds his land south on "Church street," Brin- ley, in 1720, does not use the name Frank Lane, and Mary Lane is said, in the seventeenth century, perhaps, to have been Green Dragon Lane, from a tavern which once stood on one of its corners with Thames Street. I have yet to see a conveyance which calls Church Street "Hony- man's Lane," and the old deeds curiously enough call it Church Street or Lane, while the late transfers, in 1786, for instance, use the name "New Church Lane."
Mumford shows Clarke Street as stopping on Mary Lane, but he carries it southward with dotted lines across Church, Frank and even Mill streets. Church and Frank are brought to an end about 50 feet east of Clarke, possibly by the Sanford land. Indeed there is a tradition that Sanford would not allow a street to be cut through his orchard, and, since in 1705 Walter Clarke sold to John Odlin, Jr., a lot on Mary Lane bounded east by "parts of a way called Spring street, leading to said Lane ... and on the West a joyninge to that (lot) called Sanford's orchard," it seems plain why Clarke Street was never carried south- ward. If it had been, it would have cut off the tower of the church of I 72 5 and have made the present church and any of the western part of the churchyard impossible. It would never have been adequate as a re- lief to traffic on Thames Street or as an outlet to the north for the grow- ing town, for it came to a dead end on Ann Street. It began again, on the south, at King Street, now Franklin Street, where it was the same as the present Spring Street, and ran to what is now Young and beyond, stopping, on Mumford's map, about 500 feet to the south. It was
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APPENDICES
probably quite as evident to the vestry of that day as it is to us that to carry Clarke Street through to King would be ruin to the church, and it seems at least possible that they saw the advantage, not only to themselves but to the town, in swinging Spring Street to the west and south joining the end of Spring Street-which, as Mumford shows it, stopped a little south of Mary Lane-with the north end of Clarke Street, or whatever it was called, a little south of the corner of King Street. That skillful piece of town planning gave them the old Sanford land at the east of the church for the lengthening in 1762, 137 and the provision for the town of another outlet to the north through the ancient Spring and Bull streets of Mumford's map to Broadway. A glance at Figure 5 will make this plain.138
At all events the church possessed, in 1762 at least, the land between the present Spring Street and the old lots, that given by Robert Carr and that sold to it by Francis Brinley.
Appendix B The Land at the West
IN 1796, the vestry resolved to sell a lot in North Kingstown "be- queathed some years past by Nathaniel Norton" and to appropriate the money "to purchase a lot of land adjoining, Westerly, the Church burial ground, of Thomas Wickham, agent for the heirs of the late James Honyman." This project must have been considered for some years before this resolve, for a deed for the land was drawn by Wickham May 23, 1790, acting, under a power of attorney, on behalf of those heirs of James Honyman, Esq., Elizabeth and Ruth, daughters of Joseph Wanton, to whom their grandfather Honyman had devised all his land on the south side of Church Street, the land between the old church lot given by Robert Carr and that lot just east of the Hicks lot which belonged in 172 I to Jacob Dehane or perhaps part of it.
137 Possibly sold to them c. 1733 by Grizell Cotton, administratrix of William Sanford. No deed has yet come to light.
138 This solution of the mystery is suggested by Mr. W. Norman Sayer, clerk of Trinity Church and city clerk of Newport.
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This land he described as: "bounded northerly on a lane or Street easterly on Trinity Church Burial Ground, Southerly partly on land late belonging to Samuel Rhodes now in possession of Benjamin Hunt- ing139 partly on land belonging to the Heirs of Nathaniel Potter and Partly on land belonging to Daniel Brown and westerly on land late belonging to William King now in possession of Mary Penrose, con- taining about a quarter of an acre."140 Though this deed is dated 1790, it was not signed, as has been said, till May 24, 1796. At Easter, 1801, or at least Easter Tuesday, April 7, it was voted to sell "the lot in the Church lane ... for the most it will fetch," on condition "that no school- house shall ever be set thereon."14I
On May 4, 1801, it was voted to keep 30 feet of the lot just ordered sold as an addition to the burying ground and to dispose of the rest, and, on April 6, 1802, the committee reported that they had sold the land to Simeon Martin for $400.142
The length of these proceedings, with the fact that there is no deed to be found from the church to Simeon Martin, to whom the Honyman heirs had already, on January 10, 1787, sold the present Seabury estate on the corner of Church and Thames streets, with the fact that the church retained for the burial ground not 30 but something over 50 feet of land, point to considerable negotiation. For, while his deed purports to convey "about a quarter of an acre," or a lot about 2 10 feet long, reach- ing to the east line of the land of Mary Penrose, which included the old Hicks lot of her grandfather, Judge Dunbar, and 27 feet of Jacob Dehane's, apparently acquired by the Judge, we know that Wickham, or his principals, did not, in fact, have that amount to sell, and, of course, the church could not sell to Martin. What Martin did acquire from the church was a lot 70 feet long between the west line which the vestry established for the burial ground and the land which John King, of New Shoreham, sold, on May 10, 1786, to Lewis De Blois, of Boston. This last transaction, between two men, neither of whom lived in New- port, seems to have escaped Wickham entirely. It must have been sold to William King by Honyman and William was probably the father of
139 He sold to Bathsheba Searing.
140 Land Evidence, VI, 203.
14I Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 228.
142 Ibid., p. 233.
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John. In the chaotic state of the old land records, Wickham assumed that his clients still owned this property.
On May 6, 1802, six years after Wickham's deed to the wardens was signed, and twelve after it was drawn, George De Blois of Boston, administrator of Lewis, quitclaimed his right in this land to his brother or kinsman, Stephen, bounding west on Judge Dunbar and east on James Honyman, and extending 65 feet on "Trinity Street." On Sep- tember 18 of the same year a deed was recorded by which Stephen De Blois and his wife Jane (Brown) sold to Simeon Martin for $150 this same land. Martin now held a strip measuring 135 feet in length along the south side of Church Street, between the churchyard and Mary Penrose's land. This can be checked exactly by his deeds to his son and sons-in-law. The church land, toward the west, was just what it now is-what the church retained of the Wickham purchase. There was still a corner at the southwest where Samuel Rhodes's land abutted on that which the church obtained from Brinley. This passed to Benjamin Hunt- ing, who sold it to Miss Bathsheba Searing, who, it will be recalled, owned it at the time of the inquiry into the boundary line in 1801. In 1866, on July 26, Robert Crandall143 sold the church his half interest in the lot, and on January 2, 1873, Robert S. Franklin144 deeded to it the other undivided half, though the deed was not recorded till Janu- ary 6, 1874.
The church lot, as it now is, was complete on that date.
Appendix C
Donors to the Restoration Fund, 1925
IN the Autumn of 192 5, the two-hundredth anniversary of the building of Trinity Church, extensive repairs and restorations were undertaken under the direction of Mr. Norman M. Isham. The chancel was redec- orated and a new chancel-rail installed. Unsightly props were removed from the wine-glass pulpit. Additions were made to the old organ front presented by Dean Berkeley so as to conceal the pipes that had been
143 Deed Book, xxxIx, 97.
144 Ibid., XLV, 281.
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added to the organ and the building was painted within and without.
Contributing to the fund for this work of restoration were the fol- lowing persons :
R. Livingston Beeckman
Milton J. Budlong
Clarence A. Dolan
Lispenard Stewart
Stuart Duncan
Mrs. Arthur B. Emmons
Marion Eppley
Mrs. Daniel B. Fearing
Mrs. Richard Gambrill
Robert W. Goelet
T. Suffern Tailer Mrs. Henry A. C. Taylor
Livingston Hunt
Henry R. Taylor
Anna F. Hunter
Joseph L. Terry
Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs
James Laurens Van Alen
Arthur Curtiss James
Alice G. Vanderbilt
John Kazanjian
Amy L. Varnum
Ogden Mills
Henry Walters
Ellen Mason
Mrs. Henry Walters
Ida Mason
George Henry Warren
Marsden J. Perry
Hamilton Fish Webster
Alexander Hamilton Rice
Eleanor E. Rice Mrs. William Watts Sherman
Frank K. Sturgis (in memory of Mrs. Sturgis) Mrs. James Andrews Swan (in memory of Mrs. George L. Rives)
50 - 18 / P
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