USA > Wyoming > History of Wyoming, Volume I > Part 53
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In 1866, Montana and Idaho were detached from Colorado, and New Mexico was added, so that Bishop Randall's district was Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. This was the year of the so-called "Fetterman Massacre." At this time there were no towns in Wyoming, the only settlements being the army posts, and a few mining camps and isolated ranches along the Sweetwater, Popo Agie, and the North Platte and their tributaries. As may therefore be supposed, there were no resident clergy; church services had, however been held. The Hon. Henry J. Coke who crossed Wyoming in 1852, was accompanied by his chaplain.
From 1849 to 1862 the Rev. William Vaux was army chaplain at Fort Laramie, and was the first regularly stationed clergyman in Wyoming. Concern-
EPISCOPAL CHURCH, EVANSTON
CATHOLIC CHURCH. EVANSTON
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ing him Doctor White writes in his Life of Bishop Jackson Kemper: "When Kemper resigned the oversight of Indiana, one of his attached clergy there, wish- ing to remain under his jurisdiction, and having received an appointment to the chaplaincy of Fort Laramie, was transferred thither at his own request. The post was nearly 1,000 miles west of the Mississippi, and this circumstance led the bishop to urge the definition of the western boundary of his jurisdiction which some thought extended to the shores of the Pacific." . Chaplain Vaux stood nobly by his post during the massacres at Fort Laramie.
Another church chaplain, who served in Wyoming in the early days, was the Rev. Edmond B. Tuttle, who was chaplain at Fort D. A. Russell from January, 1868, to June, 1869.
Church life really began in Wyoming when the Union Pacific Railroad reached Cheyenne on November 13, 1867. In fact, anticipating the railroad, the Rev. Charles A. Gilbert of Illinois, spent his summer vacation in Cheyenne, and thus became the first minister to serve there. So successful were his ministrations that Messrs. S. B. Reed, Charles D. Sherman and J. D. Wooley, corresponded with Bishop Clarkson, and so impressed him with the importance of Cheyenne that on November 26th the Rev. Joseph W. Cook, rector of St. Paul's Church, West Whitelaw, Chester County, Penn., was sent to Cheyenne. Leaving Philadelphia on New Year's night he reached Cheyenne on January 14, 1868.
Cheyenne, Dakota, being within the region originally intended by the House of Bishops to be included in Bishop Randall's jurisdiction, under the name of Wyo- ming Territory (though for some time the bill providing for this did not pass Congress), Bishop Randall claimed it as part of his jurisdiction. Bishop Clarkson had proceeded upon the supposition that so long as the territory was part and parcel of Dakota, it belonged to his jurisdiction. Upon requisition being made by Bishop Randall, Bishop Clarkson withdrew, leaving Cheyenne and its first missionary under the jurisdicton of Bishop Randall.
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The first confirmation within the district was administered on July 14, 1868, in St. Mark's Parish, Cheyenne. On August 23rd, Bishop Randall consecrated the new church, thus marking the first consecration of a church building in Wyo- ming.
This church was erected upon the plot of ground where the postoffice now stands. It was subsequently removed upon a flat car to the coal mining camp of Carbon where it was in constant use until the camp was abandoned. The church unfortunately was torn down along with the other better buildings of the town, but the cross over the west end of the building, the first reared over any struc- ture within the state, now hangs upon the walls of the vestry room of the new St. Mark's, Cheyenne, which was named for St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia.
In April, 1868, Bishop Randall called the Rev. John Cornell to Laramie. When Mr. Cornell arrived in Laramie he found, so he writes, six horse thieves hanging to the timbers of a frame house in course of construction. During the year Mr. Cook and Mr. Cornell planted missions in all the towns along the railroad. Mr. Cornell writes that he also went across country as far as South Pass, accompanied by a Rev. Mr. Stewart, whose death resulted from the exposure. Thus it may be seen the church was not slow in fulfilling her primary obligation to Wyoming.
On the death of Bishop Randall in 1873, he was succeeded by the Rt. Rev. John Franklin Spalding, who found but four stations and two missionaries in the
EL LE EE
From the Herbert Coffeen Collection
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district. The following year, New Mexico was separated from the jurisdiction which was now known as the jurisdiction of Colorado and Wyoming.
In 1883, the House of Bishops erected the Territory of Wyoming into a sep- arate jurisdiction. Bishop Spalding was placed in temporary charge. This over- sight extended to 1886. At this time there were five clergymen and ten stations in the district. In 1886 there were 18 confirmations, 89 baptisms, 272 communi- cants, 32 marriages, 26 burials, 406 Sunday school scholars and the sum of $8,900.72 was raised within the district.
The most notable achievement of Bishop Spalding's jurisdiction over Wyoming was the sending of the Rev. George Rafter to Cheyenne in 1882 and the Rev. John Roberts to the Wind River Reservation in 1883, the latter undertaking the evangeli- zation of the Shoshone Indians, who had been placed under our care by General Grant. Both Mr. Rafter and Mr. Roberts are still priests of the district, and are the nestors of their respective localities.
In 1886, the General Convention created the missionary jurisdiction of Wyo- ming and Idaho, and in the following spring the Rev. Ethelbert Talbot of Macon, Mo., was consecrated bishop. In 1896 Wyoming and Idaho were separated into distinct jurisdictions and Bishop Talbot was given charge of both districts. In 1898 he was transferred to Central Pennsylvania.
Bishop Ethelbert Talbot's episcopate was one of conspicuous success. When he arrived he found four clergymen and ten stations; when he resigned his jurisdiction, eleven years later, he left sixteen clergymen and twenty stations with 729 communicants. He had built fourteen churches, among which was the beautiful cathedral in Laramie, one of the handsomest church buildings in the West. It was completed in 1917 by the erection of the two towers and the great central spire which, together with the clock and chimes, are the gift of Edward Ivinson, of Laramie, in memory of his wife. He had erected St. Matthew's Hall, Laramie, a school for boys, and had established a school for Shoshone Indian girls on the Wind River Reservation. Unfortunately, St. Matthew's Hall was afterwards lost to the church.
In 1898, the General Convention divided Wyoming into three parts. The eastern part was combined with Western Nebraska under the title "The Mission- ary District of Laramie;" the northwestern part was combined with Idaho under the title of "The District of Boise," and the southwestern portion was united with Utah under the title of "The Missionary District of Salt Lake." This arrangement continued for ten years under the oversight of Bishop Funsten, Bishop Graves, Bishop Leonard and Bishop Spalding.
The House of Bishops at the General Convention, Richmond, Va., October, 1907, in consideration of the recommendation of the Conference of the Seventh Missionary Department, held in Boise on May 3, 1907, made the boundaries of the several missionary districts co-terminus with the boundaries of the states. Under this arrangement the missionary district of Wyoming was constituted. On October 10, 1907, the Rev. Frederick Focke Reese, D. D., rector of the Church of Christ, Nashville, Tenn., was elected to be Bishop thereof, but declined the election. Wyoming was then placed under the provisional charge of the Rt. Rev. James Bowen Funsten, D. D., bishop of Idaho, until in 1909, at a meeting of the House of Bishops held in New York, the Rev. Nathaniel Seymour Thomas, rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles, Philadelphia, was elected, and on May
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6, 1909, was consecrated bishop of Wyoming. For the first time in its checkered history, Wyoming had a bishop altogether its own.
Bishop Thomas found on his arrival 10 clergy, no lay workers, 29 church buildings, 13 rector'es, 2 halls or parish houses, altogether valued at $2.40,680, 1,338 communicants, 28 parishes and missions, and 14 preaching stations, with practically no debt and no endowment.
Through the working out of a plan whereby a goodly number of men of the highest class from the eastern seminaries have been creating the vogue of the western frontier in lieu of an eastern curacy as the proper work of a ministerial interne. Wyoming has during the past nine years been privileged in securing the services of 42 clergymen of high character and unusual ab'lity who have come and gone, in addition to the 27 clergymen now canonically resident within the district. To this total of 69 men in order should be added 42 technically trained lay workers, 18 laymen and 24 lay women, who have contributed their share to the grand total of results accomplished, which places the church in Wyoming in the forefront among the churches of the state.
The Tenth Annual Convocational Journal reports 7 parishes, 43 organized missions, and 37 unorganized missions, a total of 87, with 2,846 communicants, an average of 31 communicants to a station. There are 45 church buildings, 24 rectories, 13 parish houses or halls for secular gatherings, 2 Indian schools, 2 hospitals, I orphanage and I bishop's house. The total value of the church prop- erty is $726.404. The endowment is $32,000 (entailed) for St. Michael's Mission, $18,000 for the Bishop Randall Hospital, and $1,805 for the Episcopate Fund, making a grand total of church property and endowment amounting to $778,209.
In the summer of 1910 Bishop Thomas, accompanied by the Rev. Robert M. Beckett, took a trip of 1,100 miles by wagon and on horseback through the Yellowstone Park and down into Jackson's Hole. In that interesting and beautiful valley, conditions were such that out of seven maternity cases during the summer, three women had died. As the bishop stood at the death bed of one of these women he registered the determination that these conditions should be bettered.
The following year a beautiful stone hospital, the Bishop Randall Hospital, was erected in Lander at a cost of about forty thousand dollars. On November 15. 1912, it was officially opened. It has been handsomely appointed in every particular and now is the best equipped hospital in the state, min stering to both whites and Indians.
Another five-bed hospital has been erected in Jackson's Hole, and from the beginning has been self supporting.
As there was no provision in the state for the care of destitute and dependent children, the bishop converted his house in Laramie into a home for children, turning the same over to Archdeacon Dray who was the father of the movement. The archdeacon so popularized the plan in the state that from its inception it has been able to pay its debts. Its board of managers, consisting of some of the ablest women of Laramie, represent most of the religious denominations of the city. From twenty-eight to thirty-one children have been continuously cared for, but the building is utterly inadequate to hold the number of applicants. Larger quarters are imperative if the children in need of such an institution are to be accepted.
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Last year Bishop Thomas, the president of the Cathedral Home, purchased from the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Catholic Church, four acres of ground well adorned with trees, two squares from the State University on the main thoroughfare of the city. On this plot of ground was situated the old St. Joseph's Hospital. It is in excellent repair, so far as the constructive portions of the building are concerned, but many additions are necessary by reason of its added function. The cost of accomplishing this, the largest public charitable venture undertaken out of private contributions from within the state, will be $31,602.20 according to the architect's plans. The property when completed will be valued at $50,000.
Of purely parochial institutions no mention will be made, save of the Parish House in Cheyenne which was erected in the fall and winter of 1911-12 at a cost of some forty thousand dollars. During this year of the war the Parish House has been practically a diocesan institution in the service it has rendered the soldiers at Fort Russell. For the past year the building has been in constant use and filled with soldiers.
On November 17, 1910, was held the first annual conference of the clergy in Wyoming, summoned for no other purpose than to give the clergy a week of goodly fellowship. These conferences have been made possible through the gen- erosity of Mrs. Clinton Ogilvie of New York in memory of her pastor, the Rev. Arthur Brooks, D. D. No one institution has done more to build up the esprit of the clergy than this institution which is familiarly known as the Ogilvie Conference.
CHURCH WORK AMONG THE SHOSHONES
In 1873 the invasion of the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes and perhaps the Arapahoes, were particularly severe. It was in this year that Bishop Randall visited the Shoshone Agency. The agent despatched an ambulance and three men to old Fort Stambaugh to escort the bishop in. The party left early Sunday morning for the agency. Hostile signal fires from the tops of the Big Horn and Owl Creek ranges and from other points nearer the trail aroused fears lest the bishop's party be attacked, but they reached the agency at 7 o'clock in safety. After a hasty lunch, the entire community repaired to the little old log chapel, now used as a mortuary chapel at the Shoshone burial place, and the bishop conducted service and preached. After the service it was discovered that the hostiles had been all about the church and could have massacred the whole congregation had they not supposed, as a Sioux afterward confessed, that the people had gathered in this log house using it for a fort. As it was, the hostiles cut loose the horses and stock and disappeared quietly. The following day word came in that the entire line over which the bishop had traveled had been raided. The Bishop Randall missionary window in St. Matthew's Cathedral, Laramie, memorializes the little log building at the agency.
James I. Patten, Indian teacher and lay reader from 1871 to 1874 accompanied Bishop Randall on his return trip two days later. He writes of it as follows: "After a day or two sojourn at the agency, the bishop made known his wish to return home, so the agent prepared an open rig, the only kind of conveyance he had to offer, drawn by two good horses, together with an escort of three men, selected
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHEYENNE
Methodist Episcopal Church. Catholic Church.
St. Mark's Church.
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from among the employees, each one armed with repeating rifles, and a supply of ammunition and when the party was about ready to start, Mrs. Irwin, the agent's wife, discovered that the bishop was without fire arms, therefore she soon rustled him a gun, saying, 'You might need it.' 'Well,' replied the bishop, 'I suppose it is best to have one to show, but I never fired a gun in my life.'
"We left the agency late in the morning and arrived in Twin Creek about 2 P. M., where the horses were rested awhile. The day was extremely hot. The Bishop was dressed in tight fitting broadcloth suit, with a high silk hat and the sun beat down upon him like heat from an oven. I saw that he was suffering greatly from this exposure-he was then I think about eighty years of age. While resting at Twin Creek, the bishop climbed down and bathed his face in the cool waters of the mountain streams and stretched his limbs. Beside the road was a wide flat granite rock which, by erosion, was worn smooth as maple floor. On this rock he laid himself down stretched to full length, thus resting about twenty minutes, by which time we were ready to continue our journey. We reached Miners' Delight, where the people met in a vacant building, where a short service was held and the bishop talked to the congregation for a few minutes and was introduced, when we passed on to South Pass, arriving there in the evening, where another service was held and the next morning he baptized a family of five children. Here at this time we separated, never again in this life to meet again our beloved bishop, for he never afterwards visited the agency. Arriving at his home in Denver he was confined to his room, and a short time afterward we received the sad intelligence of his death, which occurred September 28, 1873.
"My mind has reverted many times to the scene of the bishop taking his rest on the rock on the banks of Twin Creek and I at the time named it Bishop Randall's Rock. In my mind's eye, he is seen today as he then lay, as plainly as at that time."
Bishop Spalding was consecrated to succeed Bishop Randall on December 31, 1873. Ten years later he addressed himself to the Indian problem at Wind River, by sending the Rev. John Roberts as missionary to the Shoshones. Mr. Robert's trip across the divide from Green River took place during the most severe storm known for years, when the snow was three feet deep and the ther- mometer 50° below zero. Mr. Roberts himself reported to Bishop Spalding under the date of February 14th, 1883, as follows :
"I reached the Shoshone Indian Agency safely last night. after a trying journey of eight days from Green River. At the end of my first day's ride I found that ahead two coach drivers and a passenger were frozen to death and three others badly frost bitten. I afterwards saw some of the sufferers and buried one of the drivers in the snow."
Within a year Mr. Roberts had established a small school in a building erected by the Government for that purpose, with sixteen boarders and eight day pupils. He had also established a mission in Lander. Later Mr. A. C. Jones, now a banker in Laramie and the treasurer of the Cathedral Chapter, was in charge of the Shoshone scholars. He remained however, but one year. The Church of the Redeemer was completed in 1885, through the gift of $2,000 from a lady of Philadelphia : and also Trinity Church, Lander, in 1886.
During this year Mr. Roberts became superintendent of the Government school and busied himself superintending a household of eighty-six Indian
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children. In 1896 Mr. Roberts was still at his wonderful ministry of blessing, but now in charge of a contract school of twenty Shoshone Indian girls.
In 1898 a beautiful log church erected by the labors of our Indian catechist, joint translator with the Reverend Mr. Roberts of a mission Service Book, the Gospel of St. Luke, called the House of Prayer, was dedicated by Bishop Talbot on St. Bartholomew's Day.
In 1899 Chief Washakie and the Shoshones, with the consent of the Govern- ment, gave 160 acres of land one mile west of the agency, to be used as a church school and mission farm. $7,000 were spent in the erection of suitable buildings. In these buildings, known as the Shoshone Indian Mission, Mr. Roberts has carried on a church school with some fifteen or sixteen girls in constant attendance. From this mission has gone forth all the spiritual life of the reservation, and among the Shoshones our good Evangelist Moo-yah-vo has passed on Mr. Robert's message, both in word and through a goodly example.
During Mr. Robert's heroic work among the Indians, he also found time to build St. Thomas' Church, Dubois; Trinity Church, Lander; St. Matthew's Church, Hudson ; St. James' Church, Riverton ; and St. Paul's Church, Milford, besides the churches on the reservation.
ST. MICHAEL'S MISSION
Nothing was done for the Arapahoes by the church since their arrival, except what was accomplished by the personal services of the Rev. John Roberts whose primary duty was to the Shoshones, and by the efforts of the Rev. and Mrs. Sherman Coolidge whose labors are beyond praise, until St. Michael's Mission was founded through the generous endowment of Mrs. Baird Sumner Cooper in 1910. This mission has been located about six miles east of the Government school, the plan calling for a new departure in Indian education and development.
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
The first permanent Congregational Church work was begun in Wyoming Territory soon after the survey for the Union Pacific Railroad reached the base of the Laramie Mountains and the Town of Cheyenne had been located by the railroad company.
Rev. R. T. Cross, an early historian, speaks of Cheyenne in 1867 "as a per- manent camp established in the desert, with no gardens, no trees, and no weeds."
This camp was located on Crow Creek at what was then the terminus of the railroad, near the site of the City of Cheyenne, and was known by the opprobrious title of "Hell on Wheels."
The Methodists were the first to begin christian work in this embryo frontier town. They were followed shortly afterward by the Congregationalists whose preliminary work was conducted under the leadership of Rev. J. E. Roy, D. D., of Chicago, who was the missionary superintendent for the Northwest at that time.
Col. J. D. Davis, a color bearer in the Civil war, and a graduate of Chicago Seminary, was the first commissioned minister sent to Cheyenne, Wyoming, Terri-
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tory. He reached his field and began work June 6, 1869, and organized the First Congregational Church of Cheyenne the next Sabbath with thirteen members.
On the 4th of July, three weeks later, the first communion service of the new church was held, the Methodists uniting with them. In the evening a Union preaching service was held in the theater.
The erection of a Congregational Church edifice, the first in the territory, was begun in September, 1869, and was completed and dedicated in December of the same year. Until then the regular Sabbath morning services were held in the schoolhouse.
The same fall the pastor and his wife built a parsonage with their own hands, receiving only two days work from others.
When denominational fellowship meetings were planned it was found that the nearest Congregational Church to the East was 400 miles from Cheyenne ; to the South 100 miles ; to the West 1,200 miles ; while if a person wished to take the northern route he would be obliged to travel 23,900 miles to find a church of his faith and order with which to fellowship.
As soon as the Union Pacific Railroad was completed to Rock Springs a Union Sunday School was organized, which later became Congregational. Fortnightly Congregational Sabbath services were held in the schoolhouse on B Street where the Sunday school had its home, and where, on the evening of September 16, 1871, the Congregational Church of Rock Springs was organized with nineteen charter members. Early records show that for some unexplained reason the church rented a saloon for a time at $50 per month, in which it held its services. It has now commodious church and parsonage buildings. Rev. George L. Smith was its first pastor.
Following closely the line of the newly built railroad went a young man, a student of Grinnell College, Iowa, with full purpose of heart to organize Sunday schools in the newly opening Northwest. As he neared the western boundary of Wyoming he came to a new town nestling under "Castle Rock," while a great stone face, like the face of a guardian angel, carved on the rock by the hand of nature, was gazing down upon the hamlet from the mountain crest. A large sign board had been planted in the center of the village bearing this in- scription in large letters: "One hundred and five miles to South Pass; Three hundred miles to Salt Lake; Six inches from Hell." As he stood reading this remarkable production a man approached and inquired his business which he willingly told. He was immediately informed that a man had been shot and they would like to have a real funeral. To this the young man agreed and the next day went to the saloon where the body lay wrapped in a gray blanket. He began his service but was frightened and did not know what to say. Then a child cried and a man swore, and the young man's senses came back to him, and he said, "Don't swear like that. I'd give five dollars to hear the child cry again, it sounds like my sister's child, and I'm homesick." Then he preached the sermon and the people said "the kid did mighty well" and gave him some money which he used to buy singing books and supplies for a Sunday school. Later on a man from the East drifted into this town and inquired for a church. The man of whom he inquired told him that they had no church but that they had a schoolhouse and that he and his pard were running a Sunday school for the kids.
"My pard is in there," he said, pointing to the saloon. "I'm waiting for him
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