ST. JAMES'S PARISH CAMBRIDGE
FORTY YEARS OF PARISH HISTORY
1864=1904
By EDWARD ABBOTT
FOURTH RECTOR OP THB PARISH AND RECTOR EMERITUS
WITH MBMORIALS ON THE AUTHOR
CAMBRIDGE 1909
REVEREND EDWARD ABBOTT. D.D.
PREFATORY NOTE
THE substance of the following sketch was first pre sented to the congregation of St. James's, Cambridge, in four discourses, on the Sunday mornings of Advent; i,904. A number of circumstances combined to invest that year with a distinctive anniversary character. On the evening of Christmas Day, I 904; it would be just forty years since the first service of St. James's Mission was held in Atwill's Hall. On the evening of Saturday, the 31st of December, I 904, it would be just forty years to the day of the 'Yeek, as well as the day of the month, since·the rector came to live in Cambridge, taking up his pastoral work in another quar ter of the city, in another denominational relation. On the 22nd of December, 1904, it would be just twenty-five years since canonically -a..i:id by title he became rector of the Parish. On the 8th of January, I 904, it was just twenty-five years since his ordination to the Diaconate. For personal reasons, there£ore, as well as parochial, the year I 904 had an anniversary character for both people and pastor. And the four commemorative discourses were so tim_ed that their conclusion was made coincident with the formal opening of the " Edw~rd Abbott Porch," at the west end of the Church, which the appreciative affection of the Parish had caused to be erected during the year as a me morial of the ministry of their fourth rector.
I I DANA STREET, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 5, A.D., 1906.
CONTENTS ... PREFATORY NOTE • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •••• • •• 111
I. CAMBRIDGE FoRTY YEARS Aoo...... 3
II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ST. ]AMEs's. • • • • • • • • • • • . . • . • • • 11 The Diocese forty years ago ...... ' ..,.'. 13
III. THE FIRST RECTORSHIP. . • . • • . • . . • • • . . . • • • • . • • • . • • 17 The Croswells and the Christ Church Laymen...... I 9 The Huntington Movement...... 21 The First Service...... 24 Some Personal Recollections...... 2 7 The Bank Chapel ...... 29 Reminiscences of the Rev. Dr. Tomkins ...... 30 Early Glimpses ...... 32
IV. THE BUILDING OF THE FIRST CHURCH. • . • . • • • • • • • • 33 The Mission's Growth...... 35 The Second Rectorship...... 38 The Consecration ...... 39
V. THE THIRD RECTORSHIP. • . . • • •. • . • . . • • • • . • • . • • • • • • 41 • The Rev. T. S. Tyng...... • ...... 43 Mr. Newton's Letter...... 47
VI. THE FOURTH RECTORSHIP. •·· • • • • • • . • . • • • • • . . • • • • • • 49 A Tran.sition ...... 51 St. James's, West Somerville...... 57 A Parish House ...... • • 59 The Corner Lot...... 62 The New Church...... 6 5 \TI. THE FOURTH RECTORSHIP-Continued. The Paddock Memorial . .- ...... • ...... 69 A 1\1:issionary Parish...... 70 Organizations ...... 7 2 Annals of the Ladies' Missionary Society...... 73 Parish Life ...... 84 Parish Funds ...... , ...... 86 A Laymen's Parish ...... 88 Wardens and ·Vestrymen ...... 89 Helpers of Our Work...... 98 Assistant Ministers ...... 99 Mrs. James Greenleaf ...... 101
VII. A FIFTH RECTOR .••••••••.•.••••..••.•••••••••••• 103
VIII. THE DEATH ·oF DR. ABBOTT ••••••••••••••••••••••• J.07
IX. MEMORIAL SERMON •••••••••••••· ••••••••••••••••• 115
X. A LAYMAN'S TRIBUTE ...... •. 129
PRINCIPAL DATES IN THE HIS-TORY OF ST. JAMEs's PARISH •••• 135
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS oF ST. JAMEs's PARISH FROM 1865 TO l 904, . BASED ON THE CONVENTION REPORTS. Prepared by L. H. Whitney ...... 137 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
REVEREND Enw ARD ABBOTT, D.D•.•.•••.•.•.•.•••. • Fronti,piece
OLD MARKET BANK BUILDING ••.••.••••..••••• • Facing page 13
THE FIRST CHURCH • • . • • . • • • • • • • . • . . • • • • • • • . . • • . • • • • • • 33
NAVE AND CHANCEL OF ST. ]AMES's CHURCH ( The First Church) . • . • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • • 43
THE CORNER LoT...... 61
CHART SHOWING THE CANCELLATION OF DEBT ON CoRNER LoT FOR CHURCH. . • • • . • • . . • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 65
ST. ]AMEs's CHURCH (Southerly Exposure) .•..•.•••••••••.• 69
MRS. LUKE H. WHITNEY. . . • • • . • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • . • • • • • 73
ST. JAMEs's CHURCH (Westerly Exposure) ..•.•..••••..• : •• 85
MRS. MARY LONGFELLOW GREENLEAF .••••••••.••.••.••••• IOI
NAVE AND CHANCEL OF ST. ]AMEs's CHURCH •••••••.•.••••• 109
ST. JAMEs's CHURCH ( In Winter) •••••••••••••••.••.••••• 135
" When I go back to the services which I frequently held for Mr. Croswell in the little building now used as a bank, I think, on the other side of the street, the expansion of St. James's seems to me the most remarkable instance of Church growth in the Diocese."
The Rev. Professor A. P'. G. Allen, D.D., in a letter to the Rector, under date of November 20, 1896, on the occasion of the Twenty-fifth Anni versary of the consecration of the first church on Beech Street.
I
CAMBRIDGE FORTY YEARS AGO
" By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted."
- Pro~erbs XI: 11.
HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S P.ARJSH
CAMBRIDGE FORTY YEARS AGO
MAP of Cambridge as it looked forty years ago presents substantially the same geographical con A tour and topographical aspect as to-day, but it is hardly more than an outline of the scene to which we have become accustomed. The· territory is here, and the thief localities are unchanged, but there is a great contrast in the distribution of population. The four precincts into which the city then, as now, was divided ( Old Cambridge, Cambridge port, East Cambridge, and North Cambridge) were far more distinct in fact and far more apparent to the eye than they are to-day. Only Old Cambridge and Cambridgeport had really grown together, and a considerable part of " The Port " was undeveloped; East Cambridge, to a great degree, was cut off from its companions by unoccupied marshes, and North Cambridge was an outlying neighborhood of strag gling and unkempt appearance, stretched out along the country highway, leading to what was then West Cambridge, now .Li\rlington, and the historic towns beyond. Then, as now, the college buildings were the feature of the town; but the Lawrence Scientific School was the only building of im portance outside the College Yard. So removed was the institution from the familiarity of the public of the ·time, that on one reputable map it is put down as " Harvard's College." The Cambridge of 1864 had a population of a little above twenty-three thousand, taxable property of only $22,000,000, one High School and only sixteen other public schools, and only twenty-five churc~es. Of the churches, five were Unitarian and only two ( Christ and St. Peter's) Episcopal. St. John's Chapel on Brattle Street, and its academic companions, were not; the Shepard HI 8 TORY . 0 F 8 T. JAMES' S PARISH
Church building on Garden Street was not; the Baptist Church building on Massachusetts Avenue, below Harvard Square, was not; the Baptist Church building at Central Square was a wooden, edifice; St. Peter's Church was on Prospect Street, near Harvard, a wooden edifice now trans £ormed into a double -dwelling-house; the City J3uildings at Central and Brattle squares were not; the present City Hall was not; the Public Library was not. Yellow horse-cars were running on ten- or fifteen-minute time between the Old Elm and Town Pump at Harvard Square and _B.oston, on .the one hand, and Mount Auburn, Watertown, and West Cambridge, on the other, every half hour; but it had been only a few years since the only public conveyance between the Square and the city yonder across the Charles was an omnibus, once an hour. As late even as I 8 64 omnibuses were running once an hour on this route " well filled." Cambridge, in short, was a quiet, rural, suburban town, largely overshadowed by Boston, but distinguished by its venerable university, its historic traditions, and literary ~s sociations, chiefly the memories of Washington and the loyalists of Brattle Street, and the names of Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes, but displaying little,· if anything, of the enterprise and activity that mark its life to-day. Perhaps outside the college precincts no part of the city presented greater contrasts to the Cambridge of to-day than that in the center of which St. James's Church now stands. The "North District," it used to be called, long, long ago. Coming up from Harvard Square along what was at first " Menotomy Road," or " W e~t Cambridge Road," or· "Lexington Road," only vulgarized at a later day with the name of "North Avenue," there were no cross streets or buildings to speak of on the right-hand side above Sacra mento Street until Forest Street was reached, and none on the left above Linnrean. Just beyond Linnrean Street, Mr. Rule, an English gardener, carried on the business of a Horist,-his small grounds prettily laid out with box-bordered walks and plantations of flowering shrubs and fruits. The 6 HISTORY OF ST. J .J. MES' S P .J. R \JS H handsome modem quarter, now known as " Cambridge Heights," was then a bare and bleak and wind-swept hill. What is now the No~h Avenue Congregational Church was then a Baptist meeting-house, standing near the site of the present Law School, and our Congregationalist brethren, a small and feeble folk, were worshiping in a little wooden chapel, called the Holmes Chapel, on Arlington Street, then but the opening adventure of a street leading up the hill. The railroad crossed the avenue under the old wooden bridge, with the old wooden station hard by; passing which the avenue settled down into the commonplace character of a primitive country road, broad, winding, dusty, uncared for, leading away to the regions beyond. Rows of great elms divided the thoroughfare at one or more points into parallel sections, and stone walls, such as our grandfathers built, imparted rustic touches to the scene. Leaving a few little shops on the left at the bridge, the wayfarer came almost immediately upon the spacious cattle yards which, sweeping around Samuel Rand's dwelling house, the smart little Market Bank building of brick, and the great Market Tavern, returned to flank the road, follow ing it nearly to tlie corner of Walden Street, and extending clear to the railroad, and originally, before the railroad was built, even across the line of its track and up the slope$ be yond. This cattle market had been laid out on an enlarged scale and an improved plan in competition with the market at Brighton, and the founding of the bank and the tavern followed for the accommodation of the market business. Before the building of the railroad, droves of cattle on the hoof from all parts of the state, and indeed the whole of Northern New England, poured in here to be sold and slaughtered. A lane, where now is Cogswell Avenue, led down to and across the railroad tracks to a slaughter house over in the fields beyond. On the right of the main road, after you crossed the railroad bridge, and above ,Vhite Street, came in tum the house of Mr. Benjamin Rand, father of Mr. Henry Rand, now occupied by Dr. Steven~;
7 HIS T O R Y O F 8 T. J A ME S ' S PA R IS H then the Cutter house; then the house and shop of Jonathan Prentiss, son of one of the famous "Minutemen" of 1-77 5; then Mr. Allen's shop, and then a field extending over towards Orchard Street, used for a pasture; after which Beech Street opened out between broadly rounding corners. On this, the upper corner, behind these same old.elms, which, however, then stood in the roadway with passage for wheeled vehicles on both sides, stood the old Davenport Tavern, with angled front and irregular outlines, carrying the memories of the oldest inhabitants back to the days of President Kirk land of Harvard and his racy experiences with Landlord Davenport and his incomparable flip, and to the still older days of the Revolution, when, on the night of the I 8th-I 9th April, I 77 5, the detachment of British troops, on its way from Boston via Charlestown to Lexington and Concord, marched through Beech Street and halted at this corner, while the officers tied their horses and entered the tavern to refresh the inner man. Opposite this corner, fronting the other side of the avenue, were the hay scales, flanked by a stately quaternion of protecting elms. These trusty sentinels have long since disappeared. Next to the Davenport Tavern, going up the avenue, came a store and Blake's blacksmith shop, and then, in turn, the old Hadley house, fronting on the main road about where Blake and Hadley streets now open. Then followed an engine house, "Daniel Webster, Number 5," with a police station in the rear, beyond which a lane led down on the right to the Russell Farm at the end of Orchard Street. The present Russell Street is the enlargement of this lane. On the easterly corner of this lane stood a store, once the district school building, occupied or owned by John B. Atwill, with a hall over the store known as Atwill's Hall. Later, this building was moved back a little along the line of Russell Street, and a new front added, the original Atwill building forming the rear part of the structure that now occupies the corner of the avenue and Russell Street. The land at that time was low at this point, and held a pool
8 HISTORY OF ST: J .d MES., S P .d R '[SH fringed with willows, to which the boys of the district re sorted for bathing. Originally, this· whole ·tract had been deeded to the city for a "watering-place" at the same time that the Common near Harvard Square had been deeded for a "training field." At one time Atwill's Hall had been used for a drill room. · From this point, on both sides of the wide and rambling road and its inclosing stone walls, farms and market gardens stretched away to Alewife Brook and beyond to the hills of West Cambridge, now the Heights of Arlington.- ·lV[r. Joseph H. Rice, the first senior warden of St. James' s, was one of these " North District " farmers, and his house, since swallowed up by the changes which have taken place along Rindge Avenue, stood at the corner of what was then Spruce Street and the avenue of the present day. He was pound-keeper, and one of the overseers of the poor. Growing out of the market business a race-track had been laid out west of the cattle yards, on the site of the present " Dublin," so called ; and several times during the week, at suitable seasons of the year, crowds of the usual race course character assembled here with the natural accessories and sequences. Monday was the market day, and the peace and quiet of the Lord's Day were sadly disturbed by the preparations for· the great day of every week in the district of North Cambridge. As a matter of fact, there was plenty of cattle trading on the Sunday itself. Outraged public sentiment finally effected a change in the market day from Monday to Wednesday, and the Lord's Day was somewhat relieved. But abominations and abuses continued in suffi cient form and variety to justify the bad name of " Sodom," which the district had come to bear. The dense clouds of dust raised by passing droves of cattle, the coarse, loud voices of the drovers, fast driving and street racing, all sorts of Sunday desecration, rum-selling and rum-drinking,. swear ing and obscenity, imperiled the safety and· peace of the public, degraded social life, and polluted the atmosphere. At last the better elements in the community could brook
9 HISTORY OF S T. J A MES' S PARISH the nuisance no longer, and a committee of citizens in con junction with a committee of the legislature got a law that regulated if it did not abolish the evil, greatly to their joint credit let it be said. -, - Our Baptist brethren of that time had not been un mindful of these conditions and of the pressing need of some effort at amelioration; and two brave and resolute women from the church at West Cambridge, now Arlington, started a crusade of improvement. Under their energetic leader ship a Sunday-school had been started as far back as 1846. This led the way to the. building of a chapel in 1852, which stood on the avenue near Russell 'Lane. And this was fol lowed by the church on the opposite corner in 18 55. Our Unitarian friends were not far behjnd the Baptists in trying to do something for this needy district, and in 1~52 they built the first house of worship in this part of the city, on a lot of land on Allen Street, given by Mr. Walter M. Allen, whose dwelling-house stood about on the site of the Woodbridge Gymnasium, so called, hard by our present Chapel. The old cellar still remaining in the rear of our vacant lot between the two buildings is the cellar of Mr. Allen's barn. A fire which broke out on these premises one day in the spring of 1865 carried the sparks across the then vacant fields to the Allen Street Church and set it on fire, and it was totally destroyed. A second meeting-house aris ing on the ruins afterwards became Gothic Hall, and was finally altered over into the block of dwellings now·standi~ at the comer of Allen Street and Orchard. The Universalists were on the ground by 1869. Such were the outlines of the situation in North Cam bridge from forty to fifty years ago; the locality, the general features of life and activity, the general traits of its character, .the general nature of its appeal as an opportunity for Chris tian work. To understand the response to that appeal on the part of the~ Protestant Episcopal Church, we must step outsi•ae the particular field we have been surveying to con side_r some of the other interests and forces which help to account for the conditions of to-day. IO II THE BEGINNINGS OF ST. JAMES
" Who hath despised the day of small things? " - Zechariah IP: 1 o.
•. . , ...... -- ..-..~_:---:-~,.,~·#· .,.- ,.--.,;.-" ..... , _. ' .,.,.; ~- .•· --- ......
.... ·-•-•·•·.,.
OLD MARKET BANK BUILDING (Here for several years. beginning in June, 1866, the services of "St. James's Mission,. were held.)
H I S T O R Y O F S T. J A M E S ' S P A RI 'S H
THE DIOCESE OF FORTY YEARS AGO
HE Diocese of Massachusetts forty years ago was a different territory and presented a different constit T uency from those of to-day. Then, you wi!l re member, the Diocese was coterminous with the Commoh wealth; it took in the Berkshires as well as Cape Cod; among its important cities outside of Boston were Worcester and Springfield, as well as N e-w Bedford and Fall River; but even with this larger field, its ecclesiastical proportions and importance were to the present diminished Diocese of Massa chusetts as about one to four. If we represent the old Diocese of Massachusetts as it was in 1864 by a building thirty feet square at the base and six stories high, occupied by nine families, then the -Massachusetts Diocese of to-day, narrowed as it is, might be represented by a building two hundred feet squa_~ at the base, about fifteen stories high, and occupied by thirty-five families. Forty years ago the Diocese of l\1assachusetts contained only about 7 5 parishes and missions, a few ever I oo clergymen, and not 10,000 communicants, and reported for the year some I 200 bap tisms, 700 confirmations, 8000 Sunday-school scholars, and a total ·of contributions, for all purposes, parochial, mission ary and otherwise, of but a little over $100,oob. Dr. East burn was the bishop, fourth in succession, Englishman, tall, erect, soldierly, narrow, severe. In his report to the Diocesan Convention of I 864 he announced that he had just conse crated St. Mark's Church, Southboro, had ordered to the diaconate P. H. Steenstra, almost ever since a professor in the Cambridge Theological School, and ordained to the priesthood 0. W. Whitaker, now the bishop of Pennsyl vania; and had just officiated for the first time at Fitchburg and Gloucester; and in the bishop's address for this same
13 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH year it is ·to be. noted that Emmanuel Church, Somerville, had just been admitted into union with the convention. Bishop Eastburn was rector also of Trinity Church in the city of Boston, then housed in the old building on Summer Street, afterwards destroyed in the great fire of I 872; but this now immense parish then numbered only 3-60 communi cants. Dr. Randall, afterwards the fir~t Bishop of Colorado~ was rector of the Church of the Messiah on Florence Street, now St. Stephen's. Dr. Nicholson, afterwards a bishop of the Reformed Episcopal schism, was rector of St. Paul's. The Church of the Advent, under the rectorship of the Rev. Dr. Bolles, had recently moved into its new house of worship on Bowdoin Street, formerly occupied by the Congregation alists under Dr. Lyman Beecher, and no.w the Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist, brilliant with euchari~tic lights and odorous with incense under the hands of the Fathers of St. John. The long since defunct St. Mark's Church at the South End had for its rector the Rev. C. F. Knight, afterwards the first Bishop of Milwaukee. The Rev. Dr. F. D. Huntington was leading forward the new Emmanuel Parish· on the edges of the freshly filled Back Bay upon lines of unprecedented activity and influence. There was one small and struggling parish in the city of Worcester, that of All Saints, the Rev. William R. Hunt ington, rector, and there was one a few years older in Spring field. Only fifteen of the Massachusetts Episcopal clergymen of that day are to be recognized now in this land of the living, and only three of these fifteen - namely, the Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, D.D., of Cambridge, .the Rev. C. H. Learoyd of Wakefield, 1 and the Rev. S. H. H~lliard of Bos ton - are still resident with us. Narrowing our field of study to our own city, we find the only two parishes of our Church, Christ and St. Peter's, dividing the territory between them and supplying the only Prayer Book services which the city enjoyed, then a town less than one-third its present size. Christ Church, under the quiet and strictly conservative rectorship of Dr. Hoppin, 1Dr. Lea.roy.d died January 25, 1909. HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA R 1 S H was occupying of course its venerable and pi_cturesque house of worship on Garden Street, maintaining a dignified if not energetic existence. In its report to the bishop for I 864, Christ Church announced 244 communicants and a total of money "raised that year for all purposes of $2299.83. St. Peter's in the Port gathered a small congregation in its little wooden church on Prospect Street, and had just come under the charge of the Rev. Charles H. Seymour. It reported in 1864 only 70 communicants and about $700 raised for all purposes, though the vision of the new church building, afterwards erected on Main Street, where it still stands, was beginning to glow with the hope of realization. It was a " day of small things " with our Church in Cambridge, and the day for St. James's had not yet dawned. The hour had come, however, for the first step to be taken. The year I 8 64 was in some respects a good time, in other respects a poor time, for the starting of a new church e_nterprise. It was the last year of the Civil War. For four years the country had been passing through the severest trial in its history. In this trial Massachusetts and Cam bridge had taken .t_heir full share. Present minds, unfamiliar with those days, can have no true realization of what they meant for all concerned. When, in January, 186 I, the clouds of the great impending conflict began to gather in -the Southern sky, Cambridge men, like the men of old, formed themselves into a military company for possible service, and on the 11th of April, the second day after the Proclamation of President Lincoln calling for volunteers, t:hat same com pany, ninety-five strong, under Captain James P. Richardson, marched into Boston and sailed away to Fortress Monroe, the first company of enlisted volunteers to respond to the country's summons in her hour of need. Through the ex citing days, the anxious weeks, the weary months of the three years that followed, Cambridge bore well her -part in the great struggle, furnishing no fewer than 4135 men to the armies of the United States and 453 to the navy, in-· eluding about 22 commissioned officers; being in a~l about
15 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S P A RI S H one-sixth of the entire population of the city; to the memory of the 339 of whom who sealed their patriotism with their lives, the Soldiers' Monument on our Cambridge Common was erected. In. those days of I 8 64, as we can hardly con ceive to-day, it was still. a question whether these good men and true who had died or were dying for their country's sake were or were not to have died in v~in. The year 1864 had opened with the order for the new draft of 500,000 men. General Grant's assignment to the chief command had followed, and then the bloody battles of the Wilderness. Sherman had fought his way into the heart of Georgia and was fairly off on his famous "March to the Sea." On the 21st of December of that year he had entered in triumph the city of Savannah, and three days later the bombardment of Fort Fisher had begun. It was to the tramp of armeq. men, and the bursting of the shrieking shell, that a handful of the churchmen of Cambridge moved to the assault on the forces of the spiritual enemy entrenched in this the north part of our town. It was a lurid background against which they stood. A more timid or even a more cautious temper, a less hopeful and aggressive spirit, would have said, "Let us wait for better times." But the temper and spirit of this little handful of Christian soldiers seemed to catch an im pulse from the stirring events to the southward, and '' On ward '' was their word. III THE FIRST RECTORSHIP
" Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of lqy_e, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight._of God and our Father." - 1 Thessalonians I :3.
17
HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA R 1 SH·
THE CROSWELLS AND THE CHRIST CHURCH LAYMEN
HEN, in the Providence of God, time and place unite to create an opportunity for a special work W to be done for Christ and the Church, in the same Divine Providence hands are generally found fitted and re~dy to do the work. It was so now. There were living in Cambridge four persons_ who were destined to plant the tender shoot for which God had the soil prepared, and a fifth who should be ready in her turn to aid in its nurture and development into strength and beauty. Two of the four were the Rev. Andrew Croswell and his wife, Caroline Augusta. The Rev. Andrew Croswell was a retired Episcopal clergyman, then in his forty-second year, who, after suc cessive ministries_~t Chicopee, Brunswick, Maine, and New ton Lower Falls, --had become a resident of Cambridge. Never physically robust, somewhat worn and weary with his labors, and now at last enfeebled by disease, he had with drawn from stated duty to a quiet home on Ash Street, con tinuing to do with such might as he had such work as his willin·g but weakened hands found to do. Mrs. Croswell • was a sister of James Greenleaf, a wealthy merchant, for- merly of New Orleans, later in business in :Boston, who had married the poet Longfellow's sister Mary, built a handsome mansion on Brattle Street, within a stone's throw of the Craigie House, and had died there five years before the time with which we are ~oncerned, leaving a widow but _no chil dren to perpetuate his name and memory. Mrs. Croswell was fully worthy of the Greenleaf name. She was a rare and lovely woman, true helpmeet of her hus~and, ready to
19 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ./ltt E S ' S P A RI S H cooperate with him in_ every good word and work, and capable of laying out and following lines of her own ·with energy and efficiency. Christ Chu~ch was their parish home. There wei:e also two young laymen at . Christ Church, Samuel Batchelder and George Dexter, who were marked out for association with Mr. and Mrs. Croswell in the new enterprise at North Cambridge. G~orge Dexter was a Cambridge resident, of Ohio birth, twenty-six years old, a graduate of Harvard of some six years' standing, a lawyer by profession and a post-graduate student by choice. Early in this year of I 864, in the darkest_ days of the war, he had enlisted as a volunteer for ninety days, and served in the garrison of the fort at Provincetown. In the autumn of that year his term of service consequently expired, but the soldier's spirit was still upon him. He was ready for the new and venturesome expedition into the moral wilds of North Cambridge. Samuel Batchelder was eight years older than this his true yoke-fellow, George Dexter, but was con nected with him by many ties. Batchelder, too, was a graduate of Harvard College and the Law School, a real scholar and a good man of business, a sincere Christian and a sound and thorough-going churchman. He was so good a churchman that out of his own pocket he paid the last bills on St. Margaret's Church, Brighton, that the edifice might be consecrated on the day appointed; and what his hands did for the opening of the new mission at North Cambridge we shall presently see. He was a leading spirit,. though never of the noisy sort, in the affairs of the Diocese, and an ardent and active member of the Massachusetts Church Union, a laymen's association of that tin:ie. Such were the four persons to whom the planting and fostering care of the little mission experiment at North Cambridge were to be committed. For the source of the one other stream of influence that mingled with these in watering the first growth of the mission we must turn to another- and widely different quarter. That quarter .is the Unitarianism of the time.
20 HIS TOR Y OF S T. J A MES' S PA RISH
THE HUNTINGTON MOVEMENT We are not to think of Unitarianism in Massachusetts half a century ago as we necessarily think. of it to-day. It occupied then different ground from now. Many of the Unitarians of r 8 5o and r 8 60 could be reckoned among the Evangelicals· of to-day. Dr. Channing would hardly have owned some of the teachings which are now referred_ to his illustrious name. On a certain day in one of the fifties of the last cen tury, a young Unitarian_ minister of Boston, James Ivers Trecothick Coolidge, was preparing a sermon for Whit sunday. Before he knew what he was 4oing, he found himself writing these words: "And thus we come to the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity."1 He laid down his pen and gazed at the words in silent surprise. There they were, and he had written them. They marked for him the crossing of a Rubicon. In writing them he had passed unconsciously from the unstable shifting sands of Unitarianism ·w- the solid ground of the Catholic Faith. For years he had been studying, inquiring, reflecting; in such an hour as he little thought he had made an exchang~ of spiritual worlds. Yet even Dr. Coolidge did not conceive that in becoming a Trinitarian he was leaving anything be hind which he held and valued as a Unitarian. He under stood rather that he was simply taking on something in addition to what he possessed before. Almost immediately after this Dr. Coolidge came out to Cambridge to see his friend, Rev. Dr. F. D. Huntington, and to have with him another of those talks on the deep things of God in which the two had engaged many times before. Huntington, too, was a Unitarian, the preacher to Harvard University and Plummer Professor of Christian
1 Dr. Coolidge himself, still living in Cambridge at an advanced age, is my authority for this incident. - E. A.
21 HIS T ORY OF S T. J A MES' S PA RISH
Morals; but he was a Unitarian of the Evangelical type. He had resigned the pastorate of the South Congregational Church in Boston, afterward Dr. Edward Everett Hale's, to take the position at .Cambridge; Like Dr. Coolidge, and perhaps with hiin, he, too, had been an inquirer, a student, a reflector, but he had not gone so fast or so far as Coolidge. When on that day of meeting in Cambridge, Dr. Coolidge related to Dr. · Huntington the decisive words which his pen had been moved to write, and confessed the faith which the words betokened, Dr. Huntington replied, '' I shall never write words like those." " Yes,. you will," replied Coolidge; '' you will yet write those very words. If you keep on with the course of reading, study, and reflection which you have been pursuing with me, you must write them. You must sooner or later come to the point which I have reached a11d take the step which I have t~ken." Two years later came a letter from Dr. Huntington to Dr. Coolidge, saying, " I have written the words you wrote, and they are mine as well as yours." The passage of such a man as the Rev. Dr. Huntington of Harvard College from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism created a profound sensation in the theological world of New England. For a time the Trinitarian Congregation alists counted on his joining their body as a matter of course; indeed, he was offered one of their important pulpits in Boston; but this off er he declined. His mind was already engaged with other related questions of history, polity, ritual, sacraments, and discipline, and other decisions were to be made. There was much disappointment at his declination of the Boston off er, and there was another surprise, when, in I 860, on the Festival of the Annunciation, in old Christ Church, Cambridge, at the age of forty-one, he was con firmed by Bishop Eastburn in that branch of the Catholic Church known it~ this country as protestant and episcopal. And when, in September of the same year, in old Trinity Church, Boston, by the same bishop, he was ordered deacon,
22 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES~S PARISH
it was acknowledged on all sides that the so-called Protestant Episcopal Church had received one of the most important and distinguished accessions in its history.1 The effect of this event on the life and work of the Episcopal Church in this vicinity was indeed immediate and marked. The two friends, still united in their intelligence. theology, and spiritual sympathy, labored on in their new connections side by side. Had it not been for the Civil War, just then on the eve of outbreak, had the Church in Massa chusetts been under different leadership, had there existed some other conditions that might be named, it is probable that the movement in which Dr. Huntington became a fore most figure would have t~ken on much larger proportions and exerted a much wider influence. As it was, it was attended with notable results. There was a quickening of the Church's pulse all through the Diocese. Churchmen like Samuel Batchelder and George Dexter thanked God and took courage. A new parish was organized for Dr. Huntington in Boston, under the name of Emmanuel Parish, and a new house of worship built by his people on the outer edge of the then newly opening Back Bay. The " Church Union " came into-being, a fervent and zealous organization of young churchmen, a sort of Brotherhood of St. Andrew, an Episcopalian Club, before the time, having for its object the originating and prosecuting of measures for Church ·ex tension in Boston and vicinity and throughout the Diocese. For a. time Dr. Huntington edited regularly in one of the Boston papers a column in the interest of the Episcopal Church and its teachings; a series of public meetings was held in Tremont Temple, and the sparks of enthusiasm and endeavor spread in all directions. The Church of the Good Shepherd in Cortes Street, Boston, founded in I 863, was one of the earliest fruits of this new life; and between 1860 and I 8 6 5 no fewer than nine parishes or missions sprang into being within the limits or the influence of Boston, all 1 Meantime Dr. Coolidge had been ordered deacon by Bishop Eastburn in St. Paul's Church, Boston, April 14, 1859. 23 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH owing their origin more or less directly to the cheering con ditions of the hour. Eight of the fresh fruits of this revived life were: St. Peter's, Beverly; St. John's, Framingham; St. John's, Gloucester; Chris~, Hyde Park; St. John's, Lowell; _Emmanuel, Somerville; St. James's, South Groveland, and Trinity, Wrentham. The ninth member of the group was St.· James's, Cambridge. THE FIRST SERVICE Exactly when or how or with whom the plan took shape of starting a mission of this Church at North Cam bridge it may not be easy now to determine; but there was the outlying and needy field, here was old Christ Church, with the waiting clergyman and his wife and the two ready laymen, there was the motive power in the renewed Church life and zeal centering in Boston, the war was nearing its close and so releasing thought and energy for more peaceful enterprises, and the air was charged with the enthusiasm generated by the events of the past few years, by the aggressive leadership of Dr. Huntington, Dr. Coolidge, and other accessions, and by the vigorous support of the Church Union, bent on a general campaign of Church extension in the eastern part of the Diocese. The meetings in Tremont Temple formed a sort of tidal wave, on the crest of which there was a forward movement along the whole line. Obedient to this impulse, Mr. Croswell, his wife closely following, and Samuel Batchelder and George Dexter on his right hand and his left, with other helpers not far behind, addressed themselves to the North C~mbridge open ·door. The first practical step after the preliminaries was to engage Atwill's Hall for the purposes of a chapel, and the hall was leased to the Church Union for one year, from December 31, -I 864, Messrs. Batchelder and Dexter signing the lease on behalf of the Church Union, with Mr. Croswell as witness. 1 1 The original lease is preserved among the archives of the parish. That it was made out to the Church Union is a significant circumstance. 24 H I S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S P A R IS ~
. The undertaking was not an altogether · hopeful one. The field certainly was not the most promising. Some of the lookers-on discouraged the attempt and foretold failure. But perhaps Mr. Croswell and his "partners in the ship" were thinkir:ig less of the actualities of the present than of the possibilities of the future. They foresaw the Cambridge, and very likely the Somerville, of "forty or fifty or sixty years to come, with the inevitable growth of population, and the pressing religious· necessities that were sure to arise and for which it was none too soon to provide. Nor was it a hur ried and impulsive step. The ground had been carefully surveyed and the cost counted. A systematic canvass had been made of the district to be worked. A few Church families had been searched out. Promises of the interest of many had been secured and of the aid of some. And old Christ Church, conservative and cautious as she was, stood behind these scouts and pioneers with assurances of sympathy and support.1
1 The following memorandum communicated by Mr. L. H. Whitney, one of the earliest authorities upon the history of the parish, bears upon this point: In the history of the Episcopal Parish at North Cambridge it is very interesting to note ilie· hand of Providence in clearing away the obstacles to its progress. At the start, a careful canvass of old Ward 5 in Cambridge, and of that portion of the then town of Somerville that later became Ward 4 of the city of Somerville, did not discover a single Episcopalian resident. - Cambridge sentiment was strongly Unitarian, and at the time of the first service in A·twill' s Hall the Unitarians in the North Cambridge society had just been outvoted by the U niversalists. The Baptists had the feeling that Episcopalians were little better than heathen, and were active in a house-to--house canvass to save from the heathen as many as they could. One reason why Atwill's Hall could not be rented for an indefinite time was supposed to be hostility to the Episcopal "mission." After Ktwill's Hall was closed to the mission, the only room that could be had for the continuance of services was a large hall on the second floor of Porter's Hotel - a most unsuitable place. The Act of Congress in passing the National Bank Law closed the Cambridge Market Bank, which was a State institution, and left its building empty. This building made a convenient home for the new mission, then strong enough to form a parish organization. The growth of the parish j usti:fied the buying of land on which to build a chapel, but the funds with which to pay for a lot were on deposit for a year before any lot could be bought. The owners of the land would not sell at any price; some, because property was tied up in unsettled estates ; others, because desirable lots were used in the cattle business. It was not until a fire, which destroyed the build- 25 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA RI S H
Meanwhile Atwill's Hall, having served a variety ot uses, was put in order for its new and nobler function. It seated about one hundred and fifty persons. The old plat form was dignified with the arrangements of a chancel, and ·the evening of Christmas Day was fixed upon as the time for the first service of the new mission. The year was the Year of our Lord 1864. 2 It was a Sunday evening, too, and it was a typical Christmas Day. The weather was fine and cold, the sleighing good, and the skies were brilliant with the stars. In the morning, before dinner, ." -8am" Batchelder, as he was always called, deserting his Sunday school class at Christ Church, drove lip to the hall with his mother to see that everything was ready.3 To his surprise and disappointment, he found that the pulpit and the lecturn had not come. He hurried back to George Dexter's to report the fact; and then the two young men procured a pung, went into Boston, got the lacking pieces of furniture which had been promised and not sent, brought them out, and installed them in their places. As the evening drew on, the gas gave out, and while Mr. Batchelder kept guard to see that no further mishaps occurred, Mr.. Dexter and Mr. Croswell drove down to Old Cambridge for other means of lighting. ings then &tanding, cleared the lot for its · new use, that the site of the present chapel could be secured. And even then no additional land could be bought for less than $t .25 a foot, and at that large price nothing less than the whole corner lot as far as Orchard Street. The Allen lot, so called, extending from the chapel lot to Orchard Street, was held for a Universalist Church by Mr. Allen as long as he lived, and when, in settle ment of his estate, it was sold, May 27, 1872, it was bought to be held for the same purpose until the society finally bought the land on -the avenue where its house of worship now stands. 2In an historical note in one of the Parish Registers, Christmas " Eve " is given as the date of this first service, but Christmas " Evening " is what is intended. The evidence on this point is conclusive. a BOSTON, November 21, 1904- DEAR DR. ABBO'IT: . . . My father's diaries are not under my hand. . . . My mother is quite sure that the occasion you speak of took place on a Sunday, because she remembers the story that my father did not go to the Sunday-school on the day in question, but scandalized the members of his Sunday-school class by driving through the streets in the capacity of an expressman. Very sincerely yours, SAM:L. F. BATCHELDER. 26 HIS TOR Y O F S T. J A MES' S PA RI SU
And so at last, all obstacles overcome, the hour appointed and long looked for arrived. Notice had been given in the Christian Witness ,1 the Church paper then published in Boston, by word of mouth from house to house, and by means of printed .placards in the Cambr.idge horse cars. The hall was cheery in its dress of Chris~as greens. The very last thing, the floor was swept out by Mr. Batchelder and Mr. Dexter. The kerosene lamps shone brightly. A common stove, with a long black pipe running across the room, fur nished heat. A supply of Prayer Books was on hand,. granted by the Margaret Coffin Prayer Book Society. The congregation gathered. The preacher, the Rev. Dr. Huntington, rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston, appeared and took his place. The hall, as one remembers who was present, was " densely crowded." The singing was led by members of Christ Church, and Dr. Huntington, his Bible or Testament in hand and his finger at his text, stood forth and preached the first sermon of St. James's Mission. The text was from the Fourth Chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians at the fourth verse, "There is one body and one spirit." The theme was the Unity of the Christian Church, and the distinctive features of its faith and worship. It was the first public note struck for St. James's Parish, and the date, we repeat, .was Christmas Evening, 1864.2
SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS Beginners of a work of faith and hope and love do not always realize the possibilities of its future and the impor-
1 M1ss10N AT NORTH CAMBRIDGE. - Regular Services will be held, (D.V.) at Atwill's Hall, corner of North Avenue and Russell Streets [.sic], North Cambridge, (a little West of Porter's Tavern,) every Sunday at half past ten, A.M., and seven, P.M., commencing on the evening of Christmas Day, at the hour last named. The horse-car which leave[sic] Bowdoin Square, Boston, for West Cam.bridge, and for Rice Street, North Cambridge, pass the Halt A cor.- dial invitation to be present is extended to all. · December 22d, 1864 48 I t. 2" Christmas Day in this vicinity was one of the most beautiful Winter days with which we are ever visited." -Christian Witness, December 30, 1864- 27 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA RISH
tance it may assume. They do not always value the record of early details as they value it who come after. Particulars of the first years of the little mission in Atwill's Hall are meager. Miss Virginia M,.. Chase remembers that when she had a class in Christ Church Sunday-school, Mr. Croswell used to ask the Christ Church people to go up to the mission at North Cambridge, then worshiping in the Bank building, to help on the work by lea.ding in the responses, saying that few if any in the congregation understood their part in public worship. Miss Chase also remembers meeting once_ with Mr. and Mrs. Croswell and some others to prepare the gifts for the Christmas tree at the mission. Among the gifts was a pair of vases. Some one remonstrated at sending --,so handsome a pair of vases to such a destination, saying that there was not a family there that would · appreciate them. " No matter," rejoined Mr. Croswell, " if they have them, they will learn to appreciate them."
DR. COOLIDGE It is one of the pleasant recollections of the venerable Rev. Dr. J. I. T. Coo~idge, still living amongst us here in Cambridge, who, if he lives until· the Festival of All Saints, I 907, will on that date celebrate his ninetieth birthday, 1 that he was the special preacher at the mission on the Sunday evening following the first service, next in order therefore to Dr. Huntington. His written account of this, or of a similar service at which he was the preacher by Mr. Croswell's invitation, furnishes an interesting glimpse of the early scenes : " I have never forgotten the occasion. The hall may have been s1nall, I do not know, but it was well filled. • . . The service was earnest, devout; how could it have been otherwise led by one so reverent as he who under God had charge of the sacred work? The people ,vere most attentive to the word spoken, as I have observed the congregations of St. James's always are. I· remember the text, ' There is one fold and one shepherd.' The subject was, ' The Church the -Fold of Christ.' • • . The interest expressed after the service by pastor and people fixed the occasion in my memory 1Dr. Coolidge recently observed his ninety-first birthday. H I S T O R Y O F S T. J A M E S ' S P A R IS ff as one of the bright spots in my ministry, and made ·a warm place in my heart for the parish of St. James. I have never ceased to expect and to rejoice in its continuous growth and prosperity."
THE REV. S. H. HILLIARD l\t1Y DEAR DR. ABBOTT: Admiring and enjoying the completeness and dignity and beauty of your Church and Chapel and Parish House, at the Session of the Convocation yeste~day, sent my mind back forty years to the season of Lent, 1865. I exchanged w·ith Dr. Hoppin for the morning and afternoon services, and in the evening was driven with Mr. and Mrs. Chirles' C. Little from their home in Brattle Street to St. James's Mission. The service was held in a small hall, two or three blocks above the present Church, which was crowded. I recall the text from vvhich I preached, Psal rns 5 1 : 4. Wishing you and your people every blessing, I am Most sincerely your friend and hrnther, s. H. HILLIARD. I Jov STREET, BosToN, December 2, 1904.
THE BANK CHAPEL The lease of Atwill's Hall expired on the 31st day of December, 1865, a_Qd a renewal was proposed by Mr. Batchelder, as appears by his endorsement on the back of the instrument; but the renewal does not seem to have been granted by Mr..... t\.twill, and the mission removed to the large upper room in Porter's Hotel, used for suppers and dances, which was temporarily fitted up for its religious pur pose. Then came the unexpected opportunity to secure a separate building well adapted for a chapel. 'Fhis was the little brick building of the Market Bank, standing to this day just across the avenue between Porter Road and the Universalist Meeting-House. The removal of the cattle market to Watertown, and the subsequent discontinuance of the bank, led to the vacating of the building in October, 1865. For three years Mr. Warren Sanger,1 who still walks our streets in the vigor of an unsullied manhood, had slept in that building as a night watchman, and well does he re- 1Mr. Sanger's death occurred February 18, 1909. 29 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A. ME S'S P A RI S H member the· succession of the ecclesiastical to the financial occupation of the trim little edifice. In June, 1866, or there abouts, it was rented and refitted as a chapel for the mission, for which function it was admirably adapted, and here for several years the new young parish of St. James's found a comfortable and seemly Sunday home. Well does the writer remember driving up North Avenue in those days, days of his early residence in Cambridge, and seeing the large sign board inscribed with the name and hours of service of '' St. James's Mission" affixed to the front of the buil<:iing, mak ing known to him for the first time the existence of the work with which later he was to become so intimately and for so long associated. What would we not give to-day for the recovery of that ancient sign-board I Happily one piece at least of the furniture of that bank-chapel is- preserved, a bench or stall, which, bearing a suitable label, may be seen in the chancel of the present chapel on Beech Street, always to be kept there, it is to be hoped, as a memorial of those early days. Along with this may be mentioned the small cabinet organ, now in one of the upper chambers of the Parish House, which. was lent-:-:-not given - by Mr. George Dexter for the use of the mission, and which never has been called for up to the present time! Perhaps, even probably, this is the same organ which was fingered by Floyd W. Tomkins, now the fervent rector of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, as alluded to in the letter following, which, though carrying our minds forward to events not yet a part of history, may be inserted properly at this point:
REMINISCENCES OF THE REV. FLOYD W. TOMKINS, D.D.
' l\tly :remembrances of the early days of St. James's Church, Cam- bridge, are so associated \\rith the bright and happy years of my col lege life, and also with some of my deep life-friendships, that it is difficult to separate clearly the one from the other. When I entered Harvard in 1869 my Sundays were given to my brother, Elliott D. Tomkins,_ then rector of the Church of Our Savior, Longwood. But I soon found that the time taken up with the journey from Cambridge to Longwood was needed, and I connected myself with St. Peter's 30 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH
Church, Cambridgeport. Here I met a clergyman who preached for the rector one Sunday, and he told me of the services just started in North Cambridge, and asked my interest and help. I soon became deeply attached to the little building, formerly a bank building, where the services were held, and without much hesitation I threw myself into the work, taking an interest particularly in the music. The ser vices were well attended and gave promise of rich success. The choir \\ras a volunteer organization of ladies and gentlemen, all young like myself, and as I recall it, they seemed to have an association with the ministry to an unusual degree, as some of the men entered the ministry, some of the ladies became ministers' wives, and some of the singers were ministers' children. I recall vividly the choir rehearsals on Saturday evenings, which we all enjoyed immensely. People took more interest in such simple things then than they do now - perhaps because the music was simpler,__ and it was all a work of love. At first, if I recall rightly, the services were only held Sunday evenings, thus securing the interest of some who attended elsewhere in the morning, but who, living in the neighborhood, felt that an active endeavor like this should be encouraged. But, before long, morning worship was also held, and the work attracted a broader constituency and a wider attention. I do not know how Mrs. Green leaf came to show her interest, but when it was known that she had offered $10,000 for a site and a building our joy was unbounded. I know the old cabinet organ, the honor of playing which had been bestowed upon me, P!:tt forth its loudest tones and the ohoir sang as never before! l\lliss Foster (now Mrs. Burbank, wife of the Rev. Wm. H. Burbank, rector of St. Peter's Church, Phrenixville, Pa.) shared with me the duties of organist, and to our mutual credit be it noted that we never quarreled! In fact, I think there never were any choir battles in those happy days of loving service. The new church, now the old ohurch used as a chapel, grew apace. I remember going to try the organ before it was put in place. I think it w~ in some private residence. I recommended it heartily, and it was put in the church, where it suited admirably. Soon came the day of Consecration, and a happier body of people, in cluding the choir and the nervous but triumphant organist, never assembled for such a service. My mind was so taken up with my duties that I almost forgot to note the personnel" of the clergy as they 1narched up the aisle; but I recall the clear tones of Bishop Eastburn as he read the sentences, and the towering form of Phillips Brooks as, head and shoulders above all the rest, he joined in the worship. The organ and choir did their duty; the ,vork begun so feebly was established; and St. James's Church began its prosperous and noble career. 31 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A MES' S PA R IS H
Six years ·afterwards, while the Rev. Theodosius S. Tyng, now of Japan, was rector, and by his courteous invitation, I came back and preached at St. James's my first sermon in Cambridge as a deacon. It was a happy day. Many old acquaintances were renewed and reminiscences indulged in, ·and the old organ seemed dearer than ever as I listened to its tones and joined in the worship as a minister of God's dear church! I can never forget that Sunday, the culmination of many hopes and prayers, and the climax of long years of hard study. I have ·the. sermon before me now (it'was No. 1 I), and it is noted as preached at St. James's Church, North Cambridge, July 18, 1875. The text was Isaiah 53 :- 5. As I read it over, I rather won der at the patience of the congregation ! But I was young and full of. :fire, and those things, joined with sincerity, cover a multitude of sins. God grant that the great parish of St. James's may always re tain the· flush of enthusiastic piety and devoted service, which so eminently characterized those early years of its life i FLOYD w. TOMKINS. HOLY TRINITY RECTORY, PHILADELPHIA, Lent, 1904.
EARLY GLIMPSES The first baptism recorded in the primitive register begun by Mr. Croswell was administered apparently by him, in this unpretending Atwill's Hall Chapel, on the 14th of February, r 8 6 5, to Frederick Daniell, infant child of James C. and Mary Fisk, the mother surviving the father for many years in her beautiful home on Quincy Street, and long enough to witness the growth of mission as well as son into vigorous adulthood. Until her death, Mrs. Fisk was deeply interested in St. James' s, and an occasional attendant at its services. The first confirmation took place on the 29th of June in the same year, and the first person confirmed was Mrs. Maria Rice, wife of the Joseph H. Rice, who was to be the first senior warden of the coming parish. Nearly twenty years later Mrs. Rice, then a widow, gray haired and ruddy faced,_ with trembling hands lit the fire on the open h.earth that signalized the house-warming of the new Parish House, which in its turn was twenty years old in February, 1904. 32 THE FIRST CHURCH ( Now used as a Chapel )
IV THE BUILDING OF THE FIRST CHURCH
" This woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did." - The Acts IX :36.
33
HIS T O R Y O F S T. J .d ME S ' S P A R rs H
THE MISSION'S GROWTH UCH was the growth of St. James's Mission, and so steadily did its prospects brighten, that before six S months of its life had passe_d steps were decided on for a permanent organization; and on the 18th of June, 1866, a parish was duly formed. Mr. Croswell- w.as elected rector, and Messrs. Joseph H. Rice and George A. Meacham, senior and junior wardens, with Benjamin Woodward, clerk and treasurer, and Messrs. Henry Partridge, George W. Bartlett, William Hadden, Ramsay Clark, and Charles B. Tower, vestrymen. About thirty eight communicants appear on the first enrollment, and be side the names· given above the list of families includes Rice, Smith, Penney, Busteed, Locke, Hays, Whipple, Weltch, Corbin, Hatfield, Lanyard, Beatty, Sullivan, John ston, Bartlett, Brown, Liversage, Marshall, Davis, Thomp son, Holmes, and Higgins. Members of but one of these charter families remain to-day. Closely following them, however, in the parish history, and more or less associated with them in its early experiences, are the family names .of Woods, Whitney, Souther, Ammidon, Clarkson, Marvin, Kay, Nicholson, McCormack, Patrick, Baker, Allen, Hanna, Pitman, Plummer, Harrington, Foster, French, and Bruce, some of whom remain• to link the present to the past. During these formative years the mission continued to owe much to the sympathetic and fostering care of Christ Church people and other Old Cambridge friends, but it never was organically and officially a mission of Christ Church. It was from the outset an independent work, pro jected ~nd carried on in the first instance by members_ of the mother parish, but coming more and more into the hands and under the support of the North Cambridge people. From the beginning it owed more than can be measured to the working faithfulness, the loving labor, and the hopeful 35 HIST.ORY OF ST. J.dMES'S PARISH patience of ·Mr. and Mrs. Croswell. There is unmistakable testimony to the fact that he was " a singularly pure, gentle, courteous, and guileless man," aJJ,d that she was "an ex quisitely lovely _and charming woman. " 1 Character and de votion laid the foundation of their work, and the impulse of a holy faith, deep spirituality, sound churchmanship, a true missionary motive, and an unselfish consecration which they imparted to the young and venturesome parish have been abiding fo.rces in its life ·and history. Mr. Croswell was unremitting in his attentions to the stranger; the poor, and the needy, and the visits of Mrs. Croswell were like an angelic benediction. " Oh, she was a dear woman 1 " are the words in which the memory of her has found expression from more than one pair of lips, and "The highest com pliment which could be paid to him," declared a parishioner of those days, " is to say that he was worthy of her." Side by side they planted, and side by side they watered, and God gave the increase. · Very early in the history of the mission the question of a chapel in the not-distant future, with a suitable lot of land to stand on, would seem to ·have been under considera tion, and the accumulation of funds for at least the purchase of the lot was begun. And it must have been a happy day for the first rector of St. James's, a day in 1870, when all this preliminary inquiry, calculation, search, and effort cul minated in the buying of the lot on Beech Street, where our Chapel now stands, just in the rear of the old Davenport Tavern. A modest building was all that had been hoped for or even dreamed of. The securing of this lot, as leading the way towards the erection of the building, was all perhaps that Mr. Croswell felt called upon or possibly able himself to accomplish; and this point being reached, he must relin quish the enterprise for · other hands to carry forward to completion. Accordingly, in April of the following year, 1871, his resignation as rector was given and accepted. The Rev. Ed~ard H. True, who was secretary of the Eastern 1 The Rev. D. R Goodwin. HIS T O R Y O F S T. J .J. ME S 'S P .J. RISH
Convocation in that year, says, under date of December I 7, 1896, "Among the many noble-men who were in that con vocation at that time and are now in Paradise, no one was more greatly beloved than Andrew Croswell." From the human point of view it seems a pity that Mr. Croswell could not have continued his active ministrv., a little longer, for already his work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope had found their reward in the announcement that "a lady of Cambridge" had signified her intention of erecting a building for the mission at North Cambridge, on its newly purchased lot on Beech Street, and that the building would b~ not merely a chapel but a church, a real church, fully furnished and equipped for its sacred uses. The " lady of Cambridge " was no other than Mrs. James Greenleaf, the widow of James Greenleaf, who had died at his Brattle Street home in 1865, and a sister-in-law of Mrs. Croswell, living in serene and gracious retirement in the mansion which her husband had built not many years before his death, near to the far-famed home of her brother, the poet Long£ell ow. Mrs. Greenleaf at this time was a devout and devoted parishioner of old Christ Church, but naturally enough had become interested in the evangelistic work in which Mr. and Mrs. Croswell had been engaged for several years in this remote and uncultivated North Cambridge district. Perhaps the 11:ame which had been given to the mission, the same name which her husband had received in baJ?tism, appealed to her sentiment and suggested to her the making in this new little church an unnamed memorial. However this may have been, the offer to build the church was duly made and gratefully received. -- So true is it, that when there is a work of God to be done, and the time for doing it has come, the doer, in the same providence of God is generally ready for the doing. It was a munificent act, but it was only a: natural fruit of the beneficence which was a dominating trait of this woman's character,. and the beginning of a long series of similar gifts, the chief of which was herself, without which
37 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A MES ' S PA RI S H to human. sight this parish could never have attained the position which it occupies to-day among the churches of the city and the Diocese.
/ THE SECOND RECTORSHIP Meantime Mr.· Croswell had been succeeded in the rectorship by the Rev. William H. Fultz, a young Canadian from one of the Provinces, who h~d come to Boston by way of Portland two or three years before, with some ex perience as a lay-worker, and who had interested-several of the clergy in his personality and prospects. Having been admitted to the diaconate under the hands of Bishop Eastburn in St. John's Chapel, Brattle Street, on the 16th of March, 1870, he rendered some assistaf!_ce to the Rev. Phillips Brooks in the Parish of Trinity Church, Bost9n, and was then elected to the rectorship of St. James's. His ordination to the priesthood took place at the Boston Church of the Good Shepherd, on the 19th of May, 1871, and he at once took charge of the work at North Cambridge. The first important incident of his term of office was the laying of the _corner stone of the new church, which ceremonial was performed by Bishop Eastburn on the 30th of June the same year. Among those present on this occa sion was Frank Foxcroft, then a boy of four years, now the rector of St. Luke's, Charleston, N. H., who remembers the service with some distinctness. With neither the planning nor the building of the new church did the vestry of St, James's as such have anything to do, and it was perhaps un fortunate that they did not, for there is reason to fear the truth of the tradition that advantage was taken of the gener osity, amiability, and inexperience of the giver, 'and that the material result was not all that the relatively large outlay ought to have secured.. Nor was the earnest wish of Dr. Hoppin, the rector of Christ Church, acquiesced in that the new building and the mission which it was to accommodate might--c-0me under his administrative care. St. James's w~s destined .from the outset to stand upon independent ground. 38 HIS T ORY OF S T. JAMES' S PA R l SH
THE CONSECRATION
All along through the summer of 18 7 I the building of the new church went on, and with the 21st of December, St. Thomas's Day, the time for the consecration came. It was a typical New England December day, almost -seven years to a day since the first experimental service in Atwill's Hall. Truly, the planters had not sown the seed of the Kingdom in vain; their watering had been blessed; and the God-given increase had been prompter and ampler than the most $an guine had dared to hope for. The day of consecration'was bitterly cold, and the little church, fresh from the hands of carpenter and decorator-, and bright with the greens of Christmas-tide, was hardly warm enough to be comfortable. " Very cold," runs the entry for the day in Mrs. Greenleaf's private diary, "therm. 2 ° below zero, and only rose to 4 ° above in the middle of the day. Very bright and sunny. My little Church of St. James's was Consecrated to the service of Almighty God, at Io.½ A.M. Bishop Eastburn preached from Psalm xvi, 6: ' I have a goodly heritage.' Dr. Stone1 and Mr. Fultz and Mr. True2 as sigtod at the service. Clergymen present- those who took part - in surplices, the others in gowns. Good congre gation. Church bright and lovely." Some other points of the occasion Mrs. Greenleaf re called in after years. Before the service the Bishop sent for her to come to him in the little vestry. She found him with "his teeth chattering in the cold." .The Rev. Mr. Fales of Waltham was among the clergy present. After the service a sociable lunch W!! served by Junior Warden Meacham at his home on Elm Street, now: the corner of St. James's Avenue,3 to which the Bishop and other clergy present, but not Mrs. Greenleaf herself, repaired. Perhaps this was the first of the hospitable collations wp.ich the women of the parish have continued to serve on occasion 1 Dean of the Cambridge Theological School. 2Rector of Emmanuel Church, Somerville. lThe present residence of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Lamb. 39 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S P .J. R IS H in an unfailing series, and which have helped not a little to give St. James's a good name among clerical visitors at public functions of an ecclesiastical and social character. Professor Steenstra of the Episcopal Theological School also remembers being at this consecration service, and that the principal part of the little church was filled. Professor Allen was also there, sitting in one of the rear seats, in the very last pew of all,-, in fact, against the wall, with ma~y vacant seats around him. Among the clergy present he re calls Dr. Wharton, another professor in the -Theological School. It is not impossible that there may be one or two per sons still connected with St. James's who were present at that consecration service; but there is one surely whose mem bership in the parish runs back almost to that very hQur. That person is Mr. L. H. Whitney. He and his wife are a pair of living links visibly binding those early days with these. The new church on Beech Street was consecrated on Thursday, the 21st of December, 1871. The Monday fol lowing was Christmas Day. On the next ·day, Tuesday, December 26, Mr. Whitney arrived in Cambridge from Portland, Maine, to take up his residence here. On Friday he attended the Christmas Festival of the Sunday-school, which was held in the bank building; and on Saturday he was at the choir rehearsal in the same place. With his own hands he helped to bring over some of the furniture from the bank chapel to the new church, and on the Sunday fol lowing, December 31, the rector, Mr. Fultz, having gone to take a service elsewhere, the services at St. James's were left in Mr. Whitney's care. He read the Morning and the Evening Prayer, Professor Steenstra preaching at the morn ing service and Dr. Haskins in the evening. The Rev. Mr. Fultz, who had taken charge of St. James's at Easter, 1871, retained the rectorship until early in the summer -of 1873, when his resignation was given and aecepted. 1 The official records of the two years fol lowing the consecration of· the church contain nothing that calls for notice here. 1 Having given in his written renunciation of the ministry, Mr. Fultz was deposed by the Bishop of Massachusetts, January 6, 1874- 40 V THE THIRD RECTORSHIP
'' Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity." -1 Timothy IV: 12
41
NAVE AND CHANCEL OF ST. JAMES'S CHAPEL ( The First Church )
HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S '8 PA R l 8 H
THE REV. T. S. TYNG
R. TYNG, so to speak, played the part of Timothy to Mr. Croswell's St. Paul. M •When the accepted resignation of Mr. Fultz left a vacancy in the rectorship of the young, little mission parish, housed in the new pretty church on Beech Street, North Cambridge, it was a natural thing to tum to the Theological School on Brattle Street for some one to· fiJI it. Guided largely by Mr. Croswell's sagacious advice, the choice of the parish fell upon a student at that school, the Rev. Theodosius Stevens Tyng, who had just been ordered deacon by Bishop Neely of Maine, but who was a member of the Seminary ·class of 1874, and who therefore had a year more of study before his graduation. Mr. Tyng bore .an illustrious name and came of an honored ancestry. In the first place he was a grandson of the stalwart and famous Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, the rector of St. George's Church, New York, a clergyman who occupied a foremost and force ful place among -th_e metropolitan clergy of his time, and of whom, with other remarkable things, it used to be said that he could call every one of his hundreds of Sunday-school scholars by name. Young Tyng's father was the Rev. Dudley .L4i.. Tyng, an Episcopal clergyman of Ohio, whose dying message to his brethren of the ministry, "tell them to stand up for Jesus," made undying by its embodiment in the familiar and popular h~n, " Stand up, stand up for Jesus," by the Rev. George Duffield, would give him a clear title to the recollection of the Church, even if there were no other ground. Upon the 1st of October, consequently, 1873, Mr. Tyng took charge of the parish experimentally for a year. The young pastor brought to this, his first post, the momentum .of a vigorous ancestry, warm personal enthusi asm for his work, unusual powers of inventive and or.. ganizing skill, and exceptional energy, and the hopeful 43 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA R IS H
parish, waiting for a worthy leader and ready to be led, responded heartily to his earnest and aggressive measures. 1 At every point of its life Mr. Tyng made his influence felt and his efforts tell. One of his ear~y enterprises was the start ing of a parish. paper; 'The Free Church Messenger, which was published fortnightly. This paper not only served use fully as a medium of communication and inspiration between the pastor and his people, but furnishes valuable details of the parish history of the time. The slender ordinary income
1 For the information contained in the following paragraph, which throws some light on the conditions at this time, Mr. L. H. Whitney is authority. The call extended to Mr. Tyng mentioned the salary that he might expect, but said nothing of the resources of the parish with which to pay it. His inquiries on this point brought from Professor Steenstra the somewhat disparaging opinion that "St. James's Parish was a rope of sand." It was not until after he had accepted the can that Mr. Tyng learned that of the salary promised of $8oo, $4.00 was to come from the " Parish A.id Society," a diocesan organization. The vestry elected at the parish meeting, Easter Monday, 1873, was made up of new men, who concluded that because aid to that amount had been granted by this society to the former rector, the same grant would be continued to his successor. When application was made for this continued grant, difficulties were en countered. These led to a chance remark by a parishioner which came to the rector's knowledge, to the effect that it was time for St. James's to set itself free from the necessity of. asking aid from the Parish Aid Society. It was not lorig before the -young rector set his foot down in that direction. His views as to the proper financial policy of a parish also found illustration when he recommended to his congregation to take a hand in a fair that was to be held in Boston in behalf of a fund for the building of a house for the Young Men's Christian Association. He was met with the objection that the parish already had more than it could well do to meet its own needs. This objection he overthrew with the quotation, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that with- holdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty" ( Proverbs xi :24). This had the desired effect, and the women of the parish were so sue- · cessful in their effort for the Boston fair, that they forthwith commenced to prepare one of their own, which was held in due time in the old Fitchburg Railroad Depot, then still standing on Somerville Avenue, and used as a public hall after the new depot had been built _on the bridge over the tracks. The profits from this parish fair proved a welcome help when, at the ensuing Easter meeting, it was found that $150 would be needed over and above any grant from the Parish Aid Society to meet outstanding bills and close the financial year free from debt. When it is remembered that l\fr. Tyng's first year was experimental, and that his first acquaintance with the resources and prospects of the parish was rather discouraging, it will be seen how much this initiatory movement may have had to do with bringing St. James's up to the high ideal which it afterward reached of a "missionary parish." Later Mr. Tyng's policy in this respect became a parish issue, and the Easter meeting. 1876, nearly divided on it, but those who agreed with the rector carried the day.
44 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A M E S ' S PA R IS H of the mission, reinforced as it was to some extent by grants from the Diocesan Parish Aid Society, was further pieced out by sundry entertainments, such as concerts, readings, lec tures, and the like, which seem to have been easily furnished and generously supported. A reading club was formed in behalf of the circulation of good literature, and a men's club for social ends. For the use of the latter a room was hired and fitted up in Henderson's Block, just below Russell Street, and here at one time Lenten services were held in addition to its other natural and obvious uses. Joint Lent.en services were held in connection with the other congregations and their rectors of Cambridge. There was a fair at Lyceum Hall at Harvard Square, with a practical eye to the sup porting patronage of the Church people of Old Cambridge. One fall there was a "mission," that is to say, a protracted series of revival services and sermons, lasting for ten days, with an imposing list of special preachers from Boston and other adjacent towns. There were courses of Easter and Epiphany sermons by prominent clergymen of the time, whose names were sure to attract attention, with added at tractions of subject and music. A favorite " card" on such occasions, of course;-·was Phillips Brooks. Once when Mr. Brooks was announced to preach he did not come. The church was crowded to the utmost. The congregation waited patiently, but in vain. Finally Dean Gray of the Theological School, who was present, was prevailed upon to speak in his stead. He took for his subject " Phillips Brooks did not come," and of the failure of the expectant congregation to enjoy the luxury they c9veted made a spiritual improvement. A Sunday afternoon neighborhood meeting that had started almost of itself in a private house on the edge of the " Dublin" district was encouraged at one time into a sort of parish branch, with a Sunday-school at an early morning hour, a Thursday evening service for prayer and instruction, and a sewing school. Out of this work may have grown the beginnings of the movement which resulted in the building of St. James's Chapel on Newbury Street, West Somerville, Clarendon
45 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A. ME S ' S P A. RI S H
Hill; an enterprise undertaken by Mr. Tyng without much cooperation, if any, on the part of the parish, and with little or no sympatµy from the vestry, but which ·at least has held its own from that time to this, with periods of special activity and prosperity, and with now the prospect of steady growth and permanent influence and usefulness. At the same time, and under Mr. Tyng's inspiration and •guidance, if not by his immediate personal efforts, a start was made to plant our church at Arlington. Our people in that town were gotten together, services were begun in October, 187 5, the Rev._ Dr. Haskins was secured as minister, a parish was duly organized in January, 187 6, and the Church of St. John was finally built ori Academy Street, from which center the Rev. Mr. Y eames is now exerting a commanding influence in all that community. Both of these aggressive home missionary enterprises be long to the history of St. James's, Cambridge, and to the year 1876, and are to be credited to the account of the Rev. Theodosius S. Tyng. All the money with which to begin the building of the chapel on Newbury Street Mr. Tyng collected in his own hands; -and in the chapel, with help from various lay-readers, he gathered the children of the neighborhood into a Sunday-school and held regular services on the Lord's bay from the fall of 1876. Reasonably_ it may be doubted if any parish in the vicinity of Boston at this time showed stronger signs of life, or put forth more vigorous efforts for the cultivation of its field than did St. James's of North Cambridge, certainly none more so in pro portion to its age and its resources_. It more than kept alive the missionary spirit in which it was begotten; it gave new meaning and force to the missionary tradition to which it was. dedicated. A lady now living in Westfield, Massa chusefts, remembers coming shyly to the door of the little church on Beech Street, and sitting down on the steps afraid to g_(?_ in, untif Miss Ida Drake, afterwards Mrs. Tyng, came out and asked her in. That asking made her a parish ioner of St. James's, and a good churchwoman. HISTORY OF ST. IA MES' S PA RI'S H
There is, too, among the parish archives a letter re lating to this period from the Rev. William Wilberforce Newton, which deserves to be given here in full:
MR. NEWTON'S LETTER
ST. STEPHEN'S RECTORY, Pittsfield, December I I, I 896. MY DEAR DR. ABBOTT: I find it was riot the opening service 0£ your church at which I was present; but some other special service lasting all day upon -April 5, 1874. I ,vas preacher at the afternoon service and drove over from Brookline, where I was then rector of St. Paul's Church. I remember distinctly the heartiness of the service, and met upon this occasion the Rev. Theodosius Tyng, with his mother and sisters, the familiar name of Tyng being a household word to all who had been brought up in the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, which had been my early home. Mr. Floyd vV. Tomkins, Jr., then a student at the Episcopal Divinity School, presided at the organ, and marshaled a mixed choir of voices, among whom were a number of his fellow-students at the Divinity School. The sermon pr~ached on this occasion was a written one, marked " No. 186." Subject, " Results," and was from St. John xxi, 6, " And He said unto them, Cast the net upon the right side of the ship and ye shall find." The subsequent prosperity of St. James's Parish has abundantly vindicated the prophetic povvers of the young preacher upon this occasion in thus selecting such a text, and it is a source of deep regret that the visitor of twenty-five years ago is prevented from being present upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of the parish,1 amid its many tokens of success and power. · A curious and humorous incident upon this occasion I have never been able to forget, and as I pen these lines, it comes back to me with the shrill vigor of that far-o:ff April 5, twenty-two years ago. It is . ,.Dr. Nieale, in his Latin hymn, who writes "Multi sunt P resb yter1, etc. : " Many are the presbyters - Lacking information Why the cock on each church tower Fitly finds his station." 1 The occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary, not of the organiza tion of the parish, but of the consecration of the church on Beech Street. 47 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH
As the earnest and enthusiastic Mr. Tomkins led the choir at this service, it so happened that a neighboring chanticleer, a vigorous and loud-mouthed fellow, was evidently determined not to be put down by organ and chorus, and at the expiration of every Gloria Patri, ,vith the undeviating regularity of the 1\1echanical Cock in the famous clock at Strasburg Cathe " I have planted, .i\.pollos watered; but God gave the increase.'' - I Corinthians Ill :6. 49 HI 8 T O R Y O F S T. · J A ME S' S PA R l SH A TRANSITION UT now a momentous change was to take place in the life of St. James's, Cambridge. It was suddenly to B lose its tried and trusted pastor and take a stranger in exchange. _ The. Cambridge Tribune of June 2, 1878, under the head of North Cambridge, contained the following paragraph: "ST. JAMES'S CHURCH "At the meeting of the wardens and vestry of St. James's Church, last week Tuesday evening, the resignation of Rev. T. S. Tyng was received and reluctantly accepted. Mr. Tyng was insti tuted rector of this parish in 1873, and it is largely due to his fidelity, zeal, and ability that the society has been enabled to maintain itself through times of unexampled depression, and in a locality by no means especially favorable to the prosperity of an Episcopal parish. It is understood that_ Mr. Tyng proposes to engage in missionary work in Japan under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society. By an unanimous vote of the vestry the Rev. Edward Abbott, for merly pastor of a Congregational society in this city, was invited to act as lay-reader until his ordination as a clergyman of the Episcopal Church enables him to take charge of St. James's Parish as its rector. Mr. Abbott is still undecided as to the acceptance of this or any call to the •ministry." The individual referred to in such terms of uncertainty in the latter part of the above paragraph had been living in Cambridge since the evening of Saturday, the 31st day of December, 1864, being the Saturday of the same week in which had been held the opening service of St. James's Mission; having come to the city at the invitation_ of the officers of the Prospect ·Street Congregational Church to take charge of the Stearns Chapel, a mission of that church, occupying a building erected a few years previous on Har- 51 HISTORY OF ST. J d MES' S Pd RISH vard Street near Windsor, largely by the gift of a Mr. Stearns,. son of the Rev. Dr. William A. Stearns, once a pastor of the Prospect Street Church, and afterwards Presi dent of Amherst College, and intended in some sense as a memori.al of him. That chapel is still standing, in its old place, hemmed in by the growth of the city around it. Hum ble as it is, it has been the scene of remarkable religious activities and the birthplace of more -than one Congrega tionalist church. Here, in the first year's service of this its first pastor, was gathered and organized the _" Chapel Congregational Church," which, on removing ·to its new home of worship on Magazine Street, took the name of the Pilgrim Church, and still continues its beneficent work in that important quarter of the city. After four years of service at this chapel as pas~or of this church, Mr. Abbott had resigned to accept a position as associate editor of the Congregationalist, the organ of the denomination published in Boston, in which he remained until 1878. During this period his tastes, his experiences, his studies, and his re flections had turned his attention more and more toward the Episcopal Church. Through the latter part of it he had become a more or less regular attendant on its services, first at St. John's Chapel, Brattle Street, then under the pastoral care of his old college friend, the Rev. Dr. George Zabriskie Gray, Dean of the Theological School, and after wards at old Christ Church, of which the Rev. Dr. Langdon was the rector. Finally, at Christ Church, by Bishop Paddock, on a Friday evening in Lent, 1878, he had been confirmed, the Rev. Frederic Palmer, another Congrega tional minister, just vacating his pastorate at Revere to take the same new ecclesiastical path, kneeling at- his side to receive the same Laying-on of Hands. Almost immediately he was asked by Dr. Langdon to help in the work at Christ Church by reading a shortened service with the Sunday school and addressing them in the church on Sunday after noons~_and by Mr. Tyng to take occasional services as lay reader at the chapel on Clarendon Hill, Somerville; both of 52 ' HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA R l S- ii which duties he performed with greater or less regularity dur ing the winter and spring of 1878. The interest awakened in Mr. Abbott's mind by these experiments had much to do with settling his decision to resume the active ministry of the Gospel in the orders of the Episcopal Church, should Provi dence open the way. The way was opened. One day in the early summer of 1878 the Congrega tional minister above referred to, who had become an Episcopal layman, and in that capacity had rendered some assistance to Rectors Langdon and Tyng in their respective parishes, " happened " to be passing through the yard of the Episcopal Theological School on some errand or other at a moment, when the --Rev. Mr. Tyng and a group of students or other clergymen were clustered on the steps of the southern doorway leading into Lawrence Hall. Seeing him as he was crossing the yard, Mr. Tyng arose and came forward to speak to him, and then and there asked the question the answer to which was to determine the succession to the_ rectorship of St. James's for more than a quarter of a century to come. Prefacing his question with the an nouncement that .._h~ had decided to go to Japan to take up missionary work, Mr. Tyng asked Mr. Abbott if he were intending to take orders in the Episcopal Church, and if so would he be disposed favorably to consider a call to succeed Mr. Tyng in the charge of St. James's, which he was resigning. Into the details of the conversation which ensued it is riot necessary to enter, but the result of the interview may be inferred from the communication which was brought to the recipient, at his home on Channing Street, one after noon a few days later, by Mr. L. H. Whitney and Mr. P. R. Ammidon in person, acting as a committee of the vestry of St. J ames's Parish. It was as follows: CA1\1:BRIDGE, June 11, I 878. At a meeting of the Wardens and Vestry of the Free Church of St. James held this evening, it was unanimously voted, That the 53 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA RI S H Rev. Edward Abbott be invited to take charge of the Parish as Lay reader upon the resignation of the Rector, and to become Minister upon his ordination. A true copy. Attest: Jos. C. BaucE. Parish Clerk. Mr. Tyng's connection with St. James's closed, it may be said, with his marriage to his young parishioner, Miss Ida May Drake, which interesting event took place in the little Church on Beech Street, on the 27th of Ju,y, the Rev. Phillips Brooks officiating. Mr. and Mrs. Tyng left im mediately for their new home in J apan.1 The invitation of the vestry of St. James's having the sanction of the Bishop, and the acceptance of it his cordial encouragement, acceptance was duly signified, and on the :first Sunday, being also the first day, of September, 1878, under the Bishop's license as a lay reader, and with his special authorization as to some particulars of duty sug gested by the peculiar circumstances of the case, he who was to become the fourth rector of St. James's entered on his ministry. He remembers-well the day, a beautiful day, the small congregation assembled, the plentiful proportion of vacant seats, the novelty of the situation, the curiosity with which both minister and people seemed to regard each other, and last, but not least, the tall, noticeable, venerable, benignant figure of one woman in widow's garb, with gray hair, ruddy cheeks, and reverent demeanor, who sat in the south transept by herself, and followed the service with close attention. Who might she be? She was Mrs. Joseph H. Rice, the widow of the first senior warden, lately deceased. 1 One bit of unwritten history relating to this wedding might perhaps be inserted here. When the hour for the service came and the wedding party arrived, the marriage certificate for some reason was not forth coming. The. delay ensuing subjected the officiating clergyman to such a hurry when his turn actually came that after the service he left without 1naking the customary entry in the Parish Register. This omission was subseqti'ently rectified by Mrs. Greenleaf at her house on Brattle Street in her own handwriting, and may be seen in the Register to this day. 54 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J d ME S'S Pd R i SH So,. quietly, unobservedly, uncertainly, began the fourth chapter in the history of St. James's. Few of those then present could have thought how long that chapter was to prove. "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." From these words of St. Paul in his first Letter to the Corinthians, Bishop Paddock preached the sermon at the ordination of the Rev. Mr. Tyng to the priesthood in St. John's Chapel, Brattle Street, on the 21st of June, '1 ~74. The words enunciate a principle of progress, a law of church growth, which do not often find a more striking illustration than in the history we are now reviewing. The .words are engraved on the memorial desks which stand upon the Holy Table in the new St. James's. They should not be forgotten. Mr. Croswell planted. Mr. Tyng watered. They laid foundations; others entered into their labors and builded thereon; but in it all and through it all and over it all God presided and blessed; and of His giving is the increase. To Him and to Him only be all the glory and all the praise. The fourth .r_ectorship of St. James's, upon which we have now fairly entered, covers, roughly speaking, a period of a quarter of a century. It is a long time, too long to cover step by step, too crowded with incident to be reviewed in detail. All that can be expected in these pages is a general outline of events, dwelling only on such dominant features as give character to the scene. Through the four months remaining · of I 8 7 8 St. J ames's had the services of its lay reader, with occasional assistance of the Rev. Dexter Potter, the Rev. William Warland, the Rev. F. A. Foxcroft, and one or another of the professors of the Theological School as preachers or in the administration of the Sacraments. On the 8th of January, 1879, in the Church on Beech Street, by· Bishop Paddock, he was ordered deacon, the Rev. Charles H .. Learoyd preaching the sermon and the Rev. Dr. Langdon and the Rev. Messrs. Durell, Bishop, Gushee, Ward, Hall, 55 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA RI S H and others being present and officiating. The Rev. T. \V. Nickerson was ordained at the same time. A lunch, pro vided by the ladies of the parish, followed at Porter's Hotel, with pleasant speeches- and friendly congratulations. On the 22d of December in the same year, the prospective rector, having received and accepted formal election -thereto, and having passed his canonical examinati9ns for the priesthood, became legally and by title rector in fact. On the 20th of January, I 880, at All Saints' Church, Ashmont, Bishop Paddock again officiating, he was advanced to the priest hood, and so his fully equipped r~ctorship was ushered in. Mrs. Croswell having died in November, 1878, and Mr. Croswell in June, I 879, a proposition to place a tablet to their joint memory in the chancel of the Church was cordially received throughout the parish, and with the er-ec tion of this memorial, and in connection with an appropriate service on the Eve of All Saints, 1879, was begun that series of All Saints commemorations which continued with scarcely an interruption for more than twenty-five years. Mr. Horace E. Scudder and Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin of Harvard University gave respectively weekly instructions in the Bible and in the Evidences of Christianity. Cottage services were held in various neighborhoods. There was a Quiet Day for the clergy, in which the Bishop of the Diocese and Bishop Whitaker took part. A parochial branch of the Church Temperance Society was formed. A Friday evening service was begun, to be continued for many years, with Bible study in connection. A new Sunday-school Lesson Scheme was devised, published, and widely circulated, receiving the enthusiastic commendation of a large number of bishops and other clergy in various dioceses. A new parish paper succeeded to the Free Church Messenger. And a constant succession of lectures, concerts, readings, stere opticon exhibitions, and other suitable entertainments fed and stimulated the social life of the growing parish. 56 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA RI 8 H ST. JAMES'S, WEST SOMERVILLE When Mr. Tyng took his departure in. the -summer of I 8 7 8 he bequeathed to his successor not only the work of St. J ames's Parish proper from the center on Beech Street, but the care and responsibility of St. James' s Chapel on Newbury Street, Clarendon Hill, West Somerville, and in particular the debt resting upon that chapel, amounting to $ 53 1. 8 8. A first duty was to provide for continuing services at the chapel without neglecting duty at the church, no easy task for a new minister who was not even yet a deacon ; and a second duty was to get rid of the debt, no easy task either, considering the slender means of the mother parish, just out of the swaddling bands of the Diocesan Board of Mis sions, and the indifference if not the opposition which the chapel work had always encountered in the councils of the vestry. The first step was to secure the help of another lay reader, and one was found in Mr. Frederick C. Cowper, a student in the Episcopal Theological School, who supple mented the minister in charge at both church and chapel, and with whose help services were kept up at both places without serious interruption. Usually the rector officiated at Beech Street Sunday mornings and afternoons, and at the West Somerville Chapel Sunday evenings. On Sunday the 21st of March, 1880, the Beech Street congregation, with out previous warning, were asked to remain at the close of morning service to consider a plan for paying off the debt on the Chapel. It was stated that a promise of $2 50 had been obtained from friends in Boston, conditional upon the raising of the remainder; and that amount was asked for then and there. The. congregation present was not large. They certainly were not rich. The request was bold, if not brazen. But the desired end was accomplished. Pledge after pledge was sent up to the chancel, and in three-quarters of an hour the full amount was secured. On Easter Monday, l\1arch 28, the entire debt was paid, 57 HIS TORY OF S T. J A MES' S PARISH amounting, principal and interest, to $561.09, and the mortgage was cancelled. A parish meeting then authorized the formation of a Chapel ~issionary Board, thus be stowing upon. the Chapel congregation some measure of responsibility and authority for the management of their own affairs; and on the 8th of April, the· day of the State Fast, by Bishop Paddock, the ·chapel was duly conse crated to Almighty God. The day was fair and the Chapel was filled. A new Communion Table was in place, the handiwork and gift of Mr. John A. Dodge, who -also gave a Prayer Book desk for the same; and a set of vessels for the Holy Communion was given by Mrs. Charles R. Woods. Such was the beginning of the forward movement which has carried St. James's, Somerville, into the rank of independent parishes, and finally, though not without many vicissitudes, to the point of prosperity and promise which it enjoys to-day. Though remaining for the time being under the general direction of the rector of St. J ames's, Cambridge, Mr. Cowper was succeeded in the immediate care by Mr. Charles Morris A~dison, and he by Mr. John W. Suter, both students at the Episcopal Theological School; while from an early day, with unremitting constancy, ~he work has had the devoted support and cooperation of Mr. and Mrs. Albert S. Pillsbury, and other resident members. Pews in time supplanted chairs at the Chapel, the discarded chairs being bought and brought to North Cambridge for th~ Parish House, that it was hoped might some time be ready to receive them in the rear of the Beech Street Church. Meanwhile, the chairs were stored·. in Mr. Swinscoe's barn on Roseland Street till the projected building- should take substantial form. Mr. Suter succeeded Mr. Addison in charge at Advent, I 8 83. Under his energetic and popular lead, steps were taken to buy a new lot and move the Chapel to a better position. The new lot was bought in October, 1884, on the corner of Broadway and Clarendon Avenue, at a cost of 58 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA RI 8 H $826, much of which was raised by fairs and entertainments, the girls alone being credited with $100 of the amount; while $300 remained on mortgage. By December, 1885, the Chapel was fairly established on its improved site, the one it occupies to-day. A year later, in January, 1886, our vestry granted the Chapel congregation their provisional in dependence, as an experiment until the following Easter, and later, not without reluctance and misgiving, but in deference to their earnest wish, the grant was made_ final ; and the year 18 8 6 marks the formal and final separation· of the West Somerville mission from the mother parish in Cambridge. The Parish of St. James's, West Somerville, was fully organized in 1887, and admitted into union with the Convention of the Diocese in I R89. Its prospects were never so bright as they are to-day. A PARISH HOUSE One of the early incidents of the fourth rectorship of St. James's was a fair, a parlor fair, which a newly organized Girls' Guild held_jtt the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Fellows on Elm s·treet, in April, 1880. Its original and humble object was to raise a little money with which to re plenish the stock of Prayer Books and perhaps Hymnals in the Church. The result was a net profit of over $90. The effect of this wholly unexpected measure of success was to encourage the guild to undertake, not the provision of a new supply of books for the . Church, but to renovate and refurnish the entire building. A year went by, and in April, I 8 8 1, another fair was held under the same 'auspices, this time in the same large hall of Porter's Hotel which had formerly been the mission's place of worship, which lasted two days, and the success of which was even greater than before. When August came the Church was closed four weeks for repairs, and during that time the interior was put in thorough order. The ceiling was recolored, the walls were repainted, the woodwork was re-" finish~d," and a new car- 59 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH pet was laid over the whole floor; all at a cost of some $ 500, the entire sum having been raised in the way above described. It was a r-evelation of latent strength which elated all and astonished some, and guaranteed enthusiasm and confidence for the future. The multiplication of these parochial activities and the necessities which they created had demonstrated before this the need of enlarging the parish plant, and to meet the need a "parish house" was suggested. The building_ of this parish house marked an era in the parish life. '' A parish house - what is that? " asked the uninformed with puzzled minds. Some thought it was a house for the rector to live in. When it was explained that a parish house was a house for the parish to work in as the Church was i house for it to worship in, the idea still lacked justification. The name "parish house" was not as familiar then as it is to-day. Ignorance had to be enlightened and prejudice to be over come before the interest of the parish could be enlisted in so formidable an undertaking. But by the autumn of r 8 8 r the movement was .fairly started to buy a small vacant lot directly behind the Church as the site for such a building. It was an up-hill movement at first. There were those who said that it was absurd for a small and struggling parish like St. James's, hardly able to meet its current expenses as it was, to launch out in an undertaking which was sure to involve an expenditure of several thousand dollars before it was completed, and the utility of which was a matter of doubt even after it was completeq. But reason and faith carried the day. The lot of land ·was bought at a cost of $576; and as early as the First Sunday after Trinity, June r 9, 18 8 I, the fact that it had been secured was announced to the congregation. By October following it was fouad that $400 of the purchase money had been pledged or paid in, with a beginning of something like $1000 towards the building. From that point the project went steadily for ward. Various expedients were resorted to for increasing the fund. To demonstrate the need and illustrate the uses 6o THE CORNER LOT ( Site oE present Church. Chapel and Parish House in background ; Davenport Tavern in foreground ) · HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S P A RI 8 H of a parish house, a vacant store on the corner of Somerville Avenue and White Street was rented at $2.00 a week, and fitted up for temporary service. This room was cleaned up and put in order by some of the young men, and formally opened with devotions, music, and an address on February 21, 1883. Here a sewing school, which at first had met at the house of Mrs. Ellis on Roseland Street, came to hold its weekly meetings, the choir its weekly rehearsals, and the Little Sisters and the Girls' Guild their fairs; with occasional entertainments sprinkled along between. In this room· o:u,r first Summer Kindergarten, or Vacation School, was kept by l\t1iss Olive Morrison in July, 1883. The help rendered by this parish room to the parish life and work furnished the conclusive argument for the Parish House, and June, 18 8 3, ground was broken for the new building. Plans had been drawn by Mr. William L. Dodge, the exhibition of which satisfied the public curiosity and fed the popular interest. On Sunday morning, June 10, at close of service, the sum of $ 548 was added by contri.: butions to the building fund. Before the end of June the foundation was all in, and from that time on the work never ceased. The--- ·-rear room of the apothecary shop at the railroad bridge, then kept by Mr. Nathan L. Al\en; now Dr. Allen, was the common meeting-place of the build ing committee, of which he was one, as indeed it was some times that of the vestry; and Dr. Allen and Mr. Charles Swinscoe were active spirits in the enterprise. By December the building was covered in and roofed over, and the in terior so far advanced - lathed, though not plastered - that the Christmas Festival of the Sunday-school could be held in it; and so it was held, to the great delight of all, on St. John's Day, an abandoned furnace set up near the door supplying heat. An inspection of the building some time previous to this in its unfinished condition by a member of the congregation on a Sunday morning at the close of divine service in the Church prompted on his part the promise of the last $ 5oo needed to complete the work; and the stimulus 61 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J .i ME S ' S P .i R IS H of this generous offer was quickly felt. On a Tuesday even ing in February, 1884, the evening before Ash Wednesday, the new Parish House was dedicated. It was a stormy night but a joyous hour. The house was thronged. The Bishop and Mrs. Paddock were there; the rector of St. Peter's in the Port, with his choir, and many other visiting friends ; and the climax of the evening was reached when, as the conclusion of the dedicatory service, and after pro cession and praise and creed, prayer, and song and an ad dress by the Bishop and an original poem by Miss Annie Coffin, Mrs. Joseph H. Rice, · the venerable and stately widow of the first senior warden ·of the parish, was led forward to the fireplace, and with trembling hands lighted the first fire on the hearthstone, so completing the house- warming and signalizing the "hanging of the crane." _ The opening of the Paris~ House had. an immediate effect on the parish life. The little Church on Beech Street began to be found not large enough for increasing congre gations, and the question of making provision for the needs of the future presented itself as likely soon .to become a pressing problem. The actual movement toward the build ing of a new and larger church hinged very curiously upon, and was singularly hastened by, a mistake in the locating of the foundations of the Parish House. THE CORNER LOT Some time after the completion of the Parish House, and in connection with an engineer's. survey of the premises, it was discovered that the builder, in order to utilize every inch of a small interior lot, through a slight error.in measure ment and calculation, had projected the rear left-hand-corner of the building over on the adjoining land about eighteen inches. The lot thus encroached upon was the lot at the corner of Beech -Street and the Avenue, and was at this time the site of the old Davenport Tavern, still standing. It was owned by a Miss Meacham. The line running be- 62 H-rsTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARI'sH . tween it and the lot occupied by St. James's Church and Parish House was not at right angles with the street. This deflection had not been allowed for, and consequently the rear corner of the building towards the tavern and the stable lay over· Miss Meacham's line by a short and narrow gore. This condition of things was- rather a serious matter, and gave rise to· no 1ittle anxiety. If Miss Meacham, or her Cambridge agent, Mr. Charles H. Saunders, were so dis posed, trouble could be made for the Beech Street people. Mr. Saunders was presently approached, privately ~nd quietly, and informed of the accident, and after several friendly interviews a proposal was made to him to buy a narrow strip of Miss Meacham's corner lot so as to make the necessary easement for the intruding corner of the Parish House. Mr. Saunders politely took this proposal into con sideration, but finally it was as politely declined. In its stead he made the counter proposition that the parish should buy Miss Meacham's entire corner lot, Davenport _Tavern and all, and hold it as a site for the new church of the future. This was a startling if not a staggering proposition. It fairly took the ~ctor's breath away. This " corner lot " contained 13,202 feet of land. The price asked was $7000. Such a purchase seemed out of the question at that time for a parish no larger and no stronger than St. James's. But as time went on it began to be seen that there was no other way out of the predicament, except to cut a corner off of the building. Miss Meacham's agent would not advise his client to sell a strip; he would advise her to sell the whole. There was no disputing the pr.ospective value of the whole corner lot to the parish some day. But to make sure of it for the future it must be made sure of now. If it could be bought, and the parish did not buy it, some other party would. The price certainly was reasonable. Miss Meacham would generously cancel $400 of the purchase money· as her contribution to the fund. The old tavern, now rented as tenements, would bring in some regular income which would help to carry the prop~rty till it could be paid for or should 63 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A 1~ E S' S P .d RISH be needed. If necessity is the mother of inv~ntion, ex pediency is the father ·of effort. Gradually thus a vision_ took form and color. What at first seemed a presumptuous scheme became. a tangible and :feasible proposition. Of course no vestry of a parish like St. James's would under take or even countenance such an undertaking-. If the undertaking were seriously resolved o~, it must rest upon private responsibility. But faith took courage. Hope kin dled into confidence. And effort was crowned with success. The refusal of the corner lot was secured, and on March 2 8' I 8 8 5' the bargain was closed. The property having been acquired under these con ditions, . the next step was the raising of the money with which to pay for it. A circular bearing the cordial and emphatic endorsement of Bishop Paddock was sent through out the parish, asking a contribution from every man, woman, and child towards the purchase fund. To this appeal the response was so general and generous that in April, a month latet, it was announced in a second circular that gifts or pledges amounting to $2500 had been received from 126 individuals, ranging in amounts from 10 cents upwards; that the payment of this amount would secure the deed, which would be delivered April 25, subject to a mortgage for the balance of the purchase money for a term of years at 5 per cent. To which was added the postscript that a friend not of the parish had promised $ 5oo con ditionally on the parish raising the $2 500 to $3100, so as to make the first payment down $3600 and reduce the mortgage to $3000 to begin with~ The requisite $600 additional was raised, the purchase was made_ good with the first payment of $3 600, and on the 25th of April, 18 8 5, with a formal " Service of Possession," the corner lot passed into the ownership of the rector as trustee acting for the parish, under his " Declaration of Trust,,., and under a mortgage for $3000. It was a grand deed grandly done. Everybody lent a hand. Individuals gave and organizations worked to accomplish the result. All hearts rejoiced at the 64 -fl cf) ...c: t) Q) (IJ (Q ~....;e· -t,V S\-v-~e ~-- ~~c Ct-IA.RT SHOWING- THE:. (ANC.E:.~LATlON Or- Tr-1C De.~T ON C<.-,RN i::.R LoT F-OR THE:. CH UR.CH. HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S P A RI S H cons~mmation. No matter how long it might be before the new church would be built, all felt that it would he built sooner or later, the site for it was ours, and the future of St. James' s was secure. THE NEW CHURCH The buying of the corner lot certainly proved a wise and timely operation. It was fully justified by the result. Within two years the mortgage was reduced to $2300.- The income from the rentals of the tenements into which the' old tavern had been divided met the interest on the mortgage, the taxes, the cost of slight necessary repairs, and left a small balance monthly towards a sinking fund. _The fence that ran between the corner lot and the church lot was re moved, and a path was laid out from the Avenue across the enlarged yard to the Church direct, with a lych gate at the avenue entrance. That lych gate was afterwards removed to the Beech Street entrance to the Chapel and Parish House. The work of raising money for the reduction of the mortgage went steadily on. Meantime a careful study of the whole topographical situation, and of the natural or desired features of the new church that was to be, was privately and quietly begun, and in due time, unhekn~wn to the vestry, or indeed to anybody, a well-known church architect in New York, whose personal relations to the project designated him for the work, was commissioned to put certain home-made data upon paper in, artistic form. 1 And one evening the vestry at a regular meeting were sur prised with an invitation to inspect the ground plan and elevation of the proposed St. James's Church that might some time be. '' Do you expect ever to see a church like that standing on this corner? " asked one of the incredulous ve~trymen. He afterwards corrected his incredulity with a subscription toward the building fund of $ 1 ooo. 1 These original suggestions are preserved in Vol. VI of the Parish Scrapbooks. 65 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S., S PA RI S H No, there was no " expectation." So far there were only visions and hopes, but visions and hopes prepared the way for faith and consecration. The realization of the ideal proved to be n~arer than any one dared at first to think. By the early days of 1888 the resolution to arise and build was taking form. The building fund was actually begun. At Easter the step was decided on. Tb-e announcement of Mrs. Greenleaf of her wish to give the entire chancel as a memorial of her husband greatly stimulated effort. And when she caused to be placed in her rector's hands confi dentially her check for $2 5,ooo to be; expended for that pur pose, solely at his discretion, and without accounting, it was felt by him that the success of the great undertaking was assured. On the I 8th of June, I 888, ground was broken for the new building, ·and from that day the work wen~ forward without interruption. A minute diary of the progress of the work was kept by the rector and is preserved among the Parish Archives. From that diary the following particulars are taken. The work was done partly by contract and partly by day's labor, under the direction nf a Building Committee. The New York architect, Mr. Henry M. Congdon, was sent for and came· on for conference with the committee as to some de tails. The old tavern on the comer lot was vacated by its tenants early in June, part being sold and moved bodily away, and the rest torn down. The first stones of im portance were laid July 31, and the foundati~n was. com pleted August 16. Wednesday, August 29, -witnessed the laying of the corner stone by Bishop,_.Huntington ·of Central New York, Bishop Paddock being absent in Europe. The day was fine, the attendance large, the scene and service extremely impressive. The last $ I 800 required for the pay ment of the mortgage was given by Mrs. Greenleaf a few hours before in a check sent by her to the rector, it being her wish that the, comer stone should be laid on unencum bered gi.=ound. December I saw the great chancel arch in place, at the time the largest brick arch that ·had been laid 66 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J .A M E S ' S P .A Rt S H · in Boston or vicinity. By the end of that month the stone masons had practically finished their work and the roofing was well under way. But before January passed an un pleasant discovery was made. It was found that owing to causes which could not be satisfactorily explained, the great chancel arch had settled at the center nearly six inches. The whole had to be taken down, brick by brick, and rebuilt, and it was April. before this job was completed. Meantime the scheme for the decoration of the chancel had been decided on, the details put into form by Mr. Congdon, and ,the great windows for the aspe ordered in London. In May the lofty lantern at the crossing of the nave and transepts rose to its place, and on-the 31st of May the last stone of the memorial chancel - the cross - was fitted to its socket at 3 P.M. On Sunday, June 30, at close of Morning Service in the Church on Beech Street, the congregation repaired to the incomplete and littered interior of the new edifice and joined in a brief informal service there. August I saw a beginning made on the furniture for the chancel, and by the middle of the month the plasterers were at work. With his own eye and his own hand Mr. John A. Dodge, at the lumber yard in E·ast Cambridge, selected every individual oak plank that went into the construction of the pews, and the care that characterized that item was only an example of the watchful and tender interest that attended every step of the undertaking. On the last day of September the re moval of the staging permitted for the first time an unob structed view of the whole interior and of• the noble me morial chancel. October was busy with the finishing touches. 1 On the last day of that month the organ, Mrs. Greenleaf's personal gift, gave forth its first notes of praise. Only on November 4, the day before the appointed opening, did the great chancel windows arrive from London, to be found on being unpacked so badly broken that they had to. be sent 1 Like a lightning stroke, in the midst of these final preparations, came the news that at the General Convention, then in session in New York, the rector of St. James' s had been elected and duly qualified as missionary bishop of Japan! HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA RI S H over ·to New York for repairs. On that day a large force of the men and women of the parish were busy in the build ing putting things to rights, and on the next day, Tuesday, November 5, the new Church was occupied for devotional service, the last ·of the workmen going out as the congre gation came in. Bishop Paddock preached the sermon. The last full and regular Sunday morning and evening services in the first Church on Beech Street were held on the Sunday previous, November 3. The consecration of the Church was. necessarily post poned. Under the discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church a church building cannot be consecrated while any indebtedness remains upon it. When St. James' s was opened for use there rested upon it a debt of $19,600. It was ~ heavy incumbrance, but the people met the situatio~ bravely and resolutely. Of the total amount $6000 was covered by notes at the savings bank bearing the signatures of the rector and several of the vestrymen. For the remainder parish bonds had been issued, for which there was no security other than the good name of the parish and faith in its integrity and in its future. Of the $13,600 in bonds, $12,000 were held by one friend of the parish, not a communicant, who had taken that large amount of the bonds because of his interest in our work and his belief that we should pay our debts. The parish first paid off the notes at the savings bank, one by one, and then attacked the bonds. 1 The mere interest account on this debt amounted at the outset to a thousand dollars a year ; but besides meeting the interest promptly, the parish paid off an average of a thousand dollars a year on the principal. Those were days of gen erous hearts, willing hands, a large enthusiasm, and united effort. In the course of ten years the debt was reduced one half, and then during the temporary ministry of the Rev. Percy Gordon, who was in charge for the greater part of a year while the rector was making a tour of the world, a · 1 It was because of his sense of obligation as regarded this debt of honor that the rector felt constrained to decline the Japan Episcopate. 68 ST. JAMES'S CHURCH ( Southerly exposure) HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S'S PA RISH resolute and systematic effort was organized to wipe out the remainder. In this effort the whole vestry took an honor able, prayerful, and energetic part. Frequent meetings were held, always attended by prayer, for consultation and the Divine ·guidance, and while all concerned were more or less interested and active, and entitled to credit for the result, it is only just to say that to the courage, ingenuity, earnest ness, devotion, and perseverance of Mr. H. L. Carstein, then the parish treasurer, the success of this final effort was largely due. , On the 8th of June, 1900, the beautiful edifice was consecrated by an immense congregation, Bishop Lawrence officiating, Bishop Huntington preaching the sermon, and a large body of clergy assisting. A luncheon in the gymnasium near by gave a pleasant social finish to· the impressive exer cises of a joyous day. THE PADDOCK MEMORIAL As early as the autumn of I 8 84 a proposal was pub lished for the purchase of a parish burial lot in the Cam bridge Cemetery·ror the use of families not owning private lots in that cemetery or Mount Auburn; and at the All Saints' Eve service following, a beginning was made ~f a fund for this object._ This fund grew gradually by sundry small additions until in I 890 it amounted to about $100. On Sunday, April 20, of that year, in the Church, before the congregation, in the course of Divine Service, mention was made of this fund and its· object, and also of the oppor tunity in connection with the parish for the employment of a Christian woman who might give her entire time to work among the sick and the aged, the little children and the poor. Before the congregation had left the Church pledges were handed to the rector for completing the Burial Lot: Fund and for the support of a parish visitor. At a cost of some thing over $ I ooo a large burial lot was bought in the Cam bridge Cemetery, and duly dedicated to its purpose, and 69 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH several years after a considerable addition thereto was made by the same liberal benefactor. The possession of this lot has proved the means of great comfort to many persons. Under the ~rrangement for a ·parish visitor Miss Mary B. Merriam was· first employed for three months in 1890. In November of that year she was succeeded by Mi_ss..Jennie B. Webb, who was subsequently allowed to make public profession of her self-dedication to a life of charity and mercy under the name of Sister Dorothy. The interest in her personality and the efficiency of her work were such that at Easter, 1892, the house No. 20 Allen Street was experi mentally rented for her dwelling-place, and formally opened by•Bishop Brooks as a headquarters for her work; and plans being under consideration at the same time for providing some sort of memorial in the parish for Bishop Paddock, it was decided to make of the charitable work of the parish a "Paddock Memorial." Under that title it has. been carried on to the present time. Early in 1895 _changed conditions led to the relinquishment of the house, and in July,_ 1896, to the withdrawal of Sister Dorothy. She was succeeded immediately by Mrs. _L. H. Whitney, under whose experi enced, judicious, devoted, and loyal executive direction the work has gone uninterruptedly on.1 The " Paddock Me morial " has always been a quiet _work, and of necessity largely a hidden work, but its importance can hardly be overestimated and it must compare favorably in extent and character with the charity work of many larger parishes in• Boston and vicinity. A MISSIONARY PARISH From the outset St. James's has been a missionary parish. Conceived in a missionary spirit, nurtured by mis sionary hands, it- has been characterized by a missionary 1 Mrs. Whitney also has b~en secretary of the North Cambridge Branch of the Associated Charities of Cambridge since 1888. 70 HIS T O R Y OF S T. J A MES' S PA RI "8 H policy and method to the present time. Its field of thought and prayer and effort has always been the world. The early record of its activities is full of missions and mis sionaries, of missionary meetings, addresses, visitations, mite chests, and offerings. For at least twenty-five years there have been one or more missionary organizations in the parish, engaged in collecting and spreading missionary in formation, in· prayer for missions, and in the financial sup port of missions. The doors of the parish have been ever open to missionary Bishops and other workers in the ,do mestic and foreign fields. A long procession of such men and women have filed past the congregations gathered in these buildings. As far back as 1880 the women of the parish formed their first missionary society, with Mrs. Charles Swinscoe as its first president, and our present Ladies' .Missionary Society, of which Mrs. Edward Abbott has been the president from the beginning, celebrated in 1905 its twentieth anniversary with an aggregate of offerings to its credit exceeding $5000. At various times our young ladies and our children have had their own organizations for the cultivatiot1-.Qf the missionary spirit. In sundry ways the parish, or individual members of it, have carried on missionary work at our own doors. Neighborhood meetings have been held in destitute districts. The parishes at West Somerville and Arlington are fruit-bearing grafts from this missionary tree. At an early day a mission was maintained on Cedar Street. For a number of years we carried on a mission in the Teele Street neighborhood, Arlington, just over the line, with Sunday-school and Chapel services. And the evangelistic work which Mr. and Mrs. Carstein, so long connected with this parish, have done among the Germans of E·ast Cambridge, is a matter of common knowledge and of proper parish pride. With voice and pen, representatives of St. James' s have done wide service for the cause· of mis sions in the Church at large, and one of its ministers, Mr. Tyng, with at least seven of its members, have given them- 71 HIS T O R Y O F 8 T. J A ME S' 8 PA RI 8 H selves outright to the same cause. One of its former lay readers is now the Missionary Bishop of Hankow.1 May. this missionary spirit and _devotion never grow less I ORGANIZATION The policy of the fourth rectorship with regard to parish organizations has been · largely to let them form themselves and dissolve themselves according to the chang ing phases of opportunity and need, never-introducing one simply because it existed elsewhere, nor continuing one after it had outlived its usefulness merely for its own sake. Ac cordingly the field has usually been well occupied and nev~r encumbered. A few organizations have maintained a good degree of permanence; others have come into being, served their purpose, and disappeared. Our parochial firmanent has been studded with many transient, few fixed, stars. Most of the organizations listed below have had a short life; some of them have attained a respectable age, and are still vigorous and fruitful; the list is given with a fair measure of completeness as illustrating parish objects and parish methods. The Reading Club The Men's Guild The Chancel Guild Young Communicants' Class Girls' Guild _ Daughters of St. James St James's Guild Ladies' Missionary Society Men's Benefit Society Church Temperance Society Paddock Memorial Sons and Daughters of St James Little Sisters Young Men's Guild Missionary Helpers Junior Auxiliary 1 Bishop Roots. 72 MRS. LUKE H. WHITNEY HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S., S P .J RI S H Senior Boys' Cluh Little Housekeepers St. Anna's Guild Abbott Club---·-· ·· Women's Guild Boys and Girls' Missionary Society Young Ladies' Missionary Society St. Andrew's Brotherhood · Junior Boys' Cluh Cooking Class Monday Club Choir Guild A large mass of unwritten and unwritable parish his tory is to be read between the above lines. ANNALS OF THE LADIES' MISSIONARY SOCIETY ( Organized in 188 5) By Mrs. Luke H. Whitney The year 188J-is an important one in the life of St. James' s Parish. Rev. Edward Abbott had been the minister and rector seven years. The new Par~sh House had been occupied more than a year. The parish had increased in numbers, and to provide for probable future growth, the rector had purchased the lot on the corner of North A venue and Beech Street, where he hoped to build a new church, when the mortgage on the land had been discharged. With this stupendous undertaking in hand, but with hearts full of the spirit of missions and believing " there is that sea ttereth and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to pov erty," Mr. and 1"1rs. Abbott determined to organize a new missionary society, following the idea of the Woman's Aux iliary, and to give our funds principally through that society, but not pledging ourselves to give only in that way. 73 HIS TOR Y OF S T. J .d. MES' S P .d. RISH Mrs. Abbott took the initiative, and the first meeting was held November 3, I 8 8 5, in this room, and with the ch~ncel in the east, it resembled and was used, as chapel as well as· parish . house.· / Thirty ladies were present. Mrs. Abbott opened the meeting with prayer and praise, and made a few remarks concerning the formation of a so ciety. Mrs. Fuller, a ~ister-in-law of Mrs. Greenleaf, was present, and was our first speaker, and she had a stirring paper on the organizing of missions among the Indians. Mr. Abbott followed, expressing his gratification in the formation of a society and wished us Godspeed. Mrs. Abbott distributed small i~on mite-boxes with this injunction, " To keep the box in plain sight, and to put in a penny a week or more, as you are prospered." The following ladies consented to act as delegates to the auxiliary, Mrs. W oocfs, Mrs. Beard, Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Newman, Mrs. Whitney. The second meeting was held November 24. After opening prayers and the hymn, " Ye Christian heralds, go proclaim Salvation i:1 Emmanuel's name." Miss Hattie Miller of Roseland Street was elected secretary, served until March, resigned, and Mrs. Tobey was elected to fill the vacancy. At this meeting the roll was called and the delegates made their first reports. The members tried to copy in small blank books provided for the purpose the· names of mission stations and the ciergymen in charge, also hospitals, schools, teachers, etc., as reported by the delegates. The. delegate who made the last report did not' understand that only the salient points in mission work are needed in a report, neither did she have the courage to sit down when she noticed the ladies were becoming uneasy and the presi dent's face anxious, and she read on, until Mrs. Abbott kindly s·aid, " You have a very full report; but it is growing late, and will you read the rest at_ the next meeting? '' 74 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J d ME S ' S PA R IS H In those days Bishop Tuttle, Bishop Brewer, Bishop John Paddock, and Bishop Garrett were among the fore most in domestic work. Bishop Whipple and Bishop Hare were lea~ers in the work among the Indians, and their hands were upheld by Mr. Gilfillan_, Mr. Stroh, ·Mr. Swift, and the new Indian deacons, Charles Cook, Paul Caryl Zotem, and Emnagar~augh and with Sister Mary and Miss Ives. Mission work in Alaska was hardly begun:- Mrs. Paine, widow of the late Bishop of Africa, Mrs. Burgwin, and -Mi's. Buford were among the workers in the black belt of the South. Miss Sybil Carter was closing her work among the colored people to take up more aggressive work among the Mormons. Mexico was suffering from mismanagement, and Rev. Mr. Gordon was entering upon his work there. Mrs. Hooker's orphanage was the one bright star in this field. Bishop Williams and Rev. Mr. Tyng were in Japan follow ing the example of St. Andrew. Bishop Schereschewsky of China had, on account of ill health, resigned, and Bishop Boone was the newly consecrated Bishop. Mrs. Boone was formerly a Sunda1:sch~ol teacher in this parish. Bishop Ferguson was the newly consecrated native Bishop of Africa, Mrs. Brierly was mothering and teaching the children at Cape Mount. The diocesan branch in Massachusetts and the Episcopal City Mission of Boston were not organized. Our first box opening was held when we were six months· old. After the devotional services, the delegates made their reports, and then_ a committee of four were appointed to receive, open, and lock the boxes, and count the money. After they retired from the room, we talked over several plans for the disposition of the money we ex pected to have, and decided to put it in the savings bank for future use. Mrs. Tyng was present and told us of her work among the Japanese women. After a very long time spent in counting dimes, nickels, and many pennies, the com mittee returned and reported $70.04 as the result of keeping the Ii ttle boxes before our eyes, and the secretary records 75 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S'S PA RISH that we were as elated as though each one had contributed the entire amount. Mrs. Nichols was the first treasurer. Mr. Abbott was prese~t at the August, 1886, meeting (may I add here the summer months were devoted to parish work) , and told us the choir was to be vested in October and asked for helpers. In response to this appeal, the missionary so ciety made the .choir v~stments, twenty-six cassocks and cot tas, and most df the cassocks are in active service to-day. At the first annual meeting we voted to place on the table a mite-box for voluntary offerings, and afterwards de cided to give the contents to the- Board of Missions for general work. At the Advent box opening the present plan of counting the money was adopted as being more ex peditious. The second meeting was held at the rectory, January 24, 1887. Mrs. Abbott proposed that we finish a room on the second floor of the Parish House for various purposes connected with our work. The plan was favorably received, and later a committee was appointed to receive contributions and to look after the work, which was begun February 7. For economy, we had the walls of our room sheathed anc;l left the roof open; this plan saved the roof of the Parish House when on fire several years later. The dormer win dows were thrown out for light and ventilation, and their position in the room was determined by vote. As the work went on, the name of the room was talked over. It coul4 not be parish parlor, it was our. room for missionary pur poses. A suggestion from a member was referred to the rector, and he enlarged and broadened the idea, and the room was named "The Memorial Chamber,'' in rerµem• branc~ of eight women intimately connected with some parish work who had died within a comparatively short time. A memorial tablet was erected in the east end of the room bearing the names of those of blessed memory and the in scription " A woman that f eareth the Lord she shall be praised.'' HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A MES ' S PA R 1 S H The next question of importance was the furnishing of the Memorial Chamber. Mrs. Abbott made a list of articles needed, and placed it near the door of the room, and nearly every member contributed something. We fol lowed the suggestion of the rector and built a table round the rod that supports the floor, and that of Mrs. Fellows that each lady provide her own chair. Mrs. Kendall gave the president's chair, the late Mrs. Rice gave the old-fash ioned chair that even then had completed more than one hundred and fifty years of service. Mrs. F oxcroft' s' chil dren sent the old sofa, Mrs. Greenleaf gave the rugs, Mrs. Tobey the blue and white china, and later most of the mem bers provided their own cups and saucers. The lamp was the gift of the Daughters of St. James, an organization of young women with whom we shared our room. The en trance to the Memorial Chamber was from the unfinished room, and curtains of Turkey red we.re hung on either side of the passageway from the stairs to the door. They are now used to cover the chancel carpet of the Church during week time. The last days before the opening service were busy ones. We g~thered to set the new room in order. Mrs. Abbott and M·rs. Jameson upholstered the center table, while others busied themselves cutting the fringe for table border and organ cover. We swept, dusted, washed win dows, unwrapped furniture. Everybody worked. The room was formally opened March 17, 1887. The Holy Communion was celebrated at half-past ten, about forty receiving. Mrs. Paddock and the sister bf the Bishop were present. In the afternoon and evening the chamber was open for visitors, and about one hundred people called. The offerings of flowers were very beautiful, and at the close of the day were sent to the sick, except a vase of petunias, too small to give away, and they were left in the Memorial Chamber, where they remained for two weeks to welcome the sometime visitor. In the summer of 1887 we sent a silver communion service and proper linen to the Christians in Wakayama, Japan, and it is still in use on the holy table 77 HI 8 TORY OF 8 T. JAME 8' 8 PAR I 8 H there. We also contributed to the mission on Henderson Street, near the Arlington line, and gave personal service and money to the coffee house oi:i Cedar Street. Miss Jane Mercer, the first parisn visitor, was serving in the parish at this time, partly unde.r the auspices of the missionary society. At the Easter box opening, April 10, 18881 in response to an invitation, we voted to appropriate the savings Jrom our mite-boxes from Easter until Advent ( six months) to th_e new Church. Mrs. Tobey and Mrs. Carr were asked to read papers on the new Church at the next meeting, April 24. Mrs. Tobey proposed maltjng our offering to the Church Fund for a specific object; namely, the large, oak entrance doors, and Mrs. Carr suggested that as additional to the offering, each member pledge herself to give $ 1 .oo. Mrs. Tobey, Mrs. Carr, and Mrs. Abbott were appointed 11 committee with full power to attend to all details in the matter of the doors. During the summer we prepared a maternity box to loan in the parish, also a baptismal box for the same purpose. At the annual meeting in November, 1888, Mrs. Greenleaf, having· served two years, declined reelection as vice-president. ..l\.t Christmas, Mrs. Beard presented the little globe to hold thank offerings for special blessings, as described at a previous meeting. In March, 1889, we voted to invite the rector to preach a sermon before the society on the Sunday after Easter. Mrs. Irvine, Mrs. Cutter, and Miss Richardson were elected a committee to wait upon him and extend the invitation, which he accepted. Rev. Mr. Palmer of Andover, Mr. Strong, a~d Mr. Babcock followed him as preachers in successive years. _ In April, I 889, the members of the society gave to Mrs~ Greenleaf the oak chai~, as an expression of love and appreciation of so many years. In the summer of 1889 the men finished the room adjoining the Memorial Cham ber, and again we followed the suggestion of Mrs. Fellows and nad double doors built between the rooms. Mrs.. Medbury gave the crimson portieres that hang over the 78 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH doors. We also had the floor in the Memorial Chamber painted, as the first coat of paint refused to harden. \Ve also contributed toward the finishing of the dressing room and hall in the upper part of the Parish House and carpeting the same. The maps of the United States, China, and Japan were given by Mrs. Merrill and Miss Agnes Wyeth, to aid the delegates. in making their· reports. In 18 94, when we were nearly ten years old, it was proposed to have a constitution; we afterwards decided that we did not need one, but voted to make fifteen members constitute a quorum. In the fall of 189 5 the society made an autograph quilt under the direction of Mrs. Whiting. The profits of this undertaking were $77, and were given to the church debt fund. At the annual meeting in I 89 5 Mrs. Scheres chewsky was a guest, and made an interesting address, telling us of her husband's translation work. We._sent $34 to the Bishop towards printing his translation of the Bible into Wenli, the literary language of China. A visitor's chair, with " Salve " ~r " Welcome " carved on the back, was placed in the Memorial Chamber April 23, 1895, in mem ory of Mrs. Jameson, who had entered into rest February 9 .. May 8, 1896, we bade farewell to Mr. Roots, soon to. go to China as a missionary. In the winter of I 898 Mrs. Whiting visited southern Europe and the Holy Land, and brought home and placed in the Memorial Chamber a pair of olive wood candle holders, as a remembrance of the land where our Saviour was born. · In May, 1899, a scholarship was taken in the Hooker School in Mexico for three years, to be called the Katharine K. Abbott Scholarship, as a thank offering for the able and efficient leader it has been our privilege to have since our organization as a society. Angela Franco was placed on the scholarship, and proved a faithful and conscientious student and has since been a teacher in the school. We continued the scholarship ten years, until she was graduated. 79 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J L1 ME S' S P L1 RISH In I 892 we furnished a room in St. Mary's School for Indian girls in Dakota. In 1894 we made a special offer ing toward the floating- debt of the parish. The first appeal of the Lowell Archdeaconry was made September 24, I 894. At the same meeting_ Rev. Mr. Webster was introduced to the society as Dr. Abbott's assistant, and throughout the year Mr~ Webster manifested deep and increasing interest, not only in the society, but in the treasurer, to whom he was married shortly .after be coming rector of Ascension Parish, Waltham. In May, 1898, we held our twenty-fifth box opening. Mrs. Greenleaf said it was the silver wedding of our meetings; and May 3 I a garden party was held in the rectory grounds, with the usual attractions, and a goodly sum was realized for the church debt fund. In May, I 897, the missionary society furnished the St. James's table at the Avon Home fair. The November box opening, 1898, was a good-by meeting to Dr. and Mrs. Abbott, who were to sail away_ for a long rest. Rev. and Mrs. Percy Gordon were present. In closing, Mrs. Abbot said, " If you let the missionary society die, I don't know what I shall do to you." Mrs. Woods was commissioned to deliver to Dr. and Mrs. Abbott on the steamer a loving gift of flowers and gold from the missionary society. The flowers were placed at Mrs. Abbott's plate on the dining table, but she was obliged to ask Dr. Abbott to deliver the box to Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Woods said the last word she heard as the vessel moved down the stream were from Mrs. Abbott, " Love to St. J ames's Missionary Society." Rev. Mr. Gordon was left in charge of the parish, and was a constant and interested visitor to our meetings. In addition to our general work, we made up a special fund to furnish a room in the Cambridge Home for Aged People, and contributed 'Sheets and pillow cases to the Cambridge Hospifal. Later in the year we furnished a room in the Mothers' Rest at Revere Beach. Muslin curtains were also placed in the Memorial Chamber and a new clock placed on the mantel. 80 HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA RI 8 H The box opening, Easter, 1900, was an occasion for special thanksgiving, as the last indebtedness on the new Church had been paid and the date for its consecration fixed. The fifteenth anniversary on November 3, 1900, was a joyous occasion. The Parish House was well filled with the past and present members of the society and invited guests, who _gathered to commemorate the fifteenth mile stone in our life as a society. Mrs. Greenleaf was present, and occupied her chair. After the opening service, Dr. Abbott gave a pastoral greeting to the assembled company. The president, Mrs. Abbott, read an interesting account of the early life, youth, and--the principal events, as they have occurred during these past fifteen years. The offering was for the united offering. Each individual gift was in a small silken bag, and placed in the receiving basin, which had been given to Dr. and Mrs. Abbott in China. In 1901 a gavel, made from a piece of the old North Church, Boston, was given to Mrs. Abbott by Mrs. Pitman and Mrs. Artz. In May, r 90 I, we took the first steps which afterwards led up to the Thursday sales, which have contributed several hundred dollars to the charitable work in the parish and the reduction of mortgage on the Parish House lot. . In I 90 I we held a pound party for the benefit of one of the schools in Dakota under Bishop Hare. At the Advent box opening a little English farthing was found in one of the boxes. It could not be passed as legal tender •or given away except by vote of the society; and Mrs. Abbott decided it must be sold at auction to the highest bidder, and Mrs. Beard secured the coveted farthing for forty cents. At the April meeting, 1902, the president said she had a secret which she would tell us at the box opening, and there was a large gathering in May to hear the secret, an invitation to spend a day at Rollo Farm, which was accepted with hearty thanks, and June 7 was the day set. I can only men tion the barge ride from the station to the pleasant home among the hills, the cordial greeting from Mrs. Abbott and 81 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PA RISH family, the inspection of house and ham, the singing of the original hymn and hoisting of the ~tars and Stripes, the tele phone message. to Mrs. Greenleaf, and the gentle summer rain that accompanied. us home. At the Advent box opening, 1902., we received a kindly greeting from Mrs. Greenleaf, and it was her last message of love to us. ·December 3 she passed to the rest prepared_ for the children of God. At our December meeting a me morial service was held for her whose vacant· chair was marked with white ribbon and carnations. A memorial window given by the society and bearing her name has been placed in the Chapel, next the seat which Mrs. Greenleaf occupied for so many years. To use the words of our secre tary, " We miss her gentle presence as the days go by, but the memory of her beautiful life will rest upon· us like a benediction always." Dr. and Mrs. Abbott spent the early part of 1903 visiting the mission stations in Cuba and Mexico, and we voted that a gift of $10 for Mr. McGee in Havana (a former assistant in this parish), and $10 for Mr. Forrester in Mexico, with cordial greetings from St. James's Mis sionary Society, be sent to Dr. and Mrs. Abbott to hand to these respective clergymen. In April we welcomed our president from her southern trip, and bade Godspeed to Miss Pritchard, who was soon to go as a missionary to Alaska. A pleasant occasion of 1903 was the visit of the Lord Bishop of Mackenzie River with ~is wife and daughter on their way to their northern home. · The all-absorbing topic of 1904 was the- general con vention and the triennial meeting of the Woman's Auxiliary, in Boston, during October. At the Advent box opening, Mrs. McKim from Japan, Mrs. Graves from China, Mrs. Whiting from Ohio, and others were our guests. Tea was served~ during the convention, every after~oon to the officers and delegates in Pierce Hall, and on October 14 our society gave the tea, which was well attended. HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S" S P .J. RISH One of our members, Miss Williams, spent a part of her vacation last summer in Alaska and visited several mis sion stations, among them the one at Ketchikan where Miss Pritchard is stationed. While in Alaska Miss Williams found a horn spoon and a totem pole decorated with paint and carving telling some legend of the tribe, and brought them home ,with her and placed them in the Memorial Chamber. They are a reminder of the northland when making appropriations. Our Memorial Chamber has ~any pleasant associations as well as pleasant memories. Every article of decoration and furniture speaks to us of some mem ber, either past or present. The chairs bear the names of their donors. It has been our missionary home, and in it we have welcomed bishops, priests, deacons and dea.con esses, and missionaries from far and near, and royalty in the person of an African prince. I have not mentioned our gifts to general missionary work, only a few of the special objects in the society and parish that recall pleasant mem ories; neither can I give statistics, only I must tell you where our offerings have been sent during the past twenty years : to thirty-two states and territories, to Alaska and British Columbia, to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, to Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Porto Rico and Brazil, to Japan, China .and Africa, to the Philippines, to the Holy Land, and to the Mohammedans. These are the annals of the Missionary Society or ganized in I 8 8 5. Not the first or the second missionary society in St. James's Parish, but the one that united prayer, knowledge, and giving, as the foundations of a permanent structure. Another period of time has closed, and with some self-conceit we look back and think what we have .done, now let us try to realize what we might have done and then go forward with the determination to do more. " Call us not hence, with mission unfulfilled ; Let us not leave our space of ground untilled; Impress this truth upon us, that not one Can do our portion that we leave undone, For each one in Thy vineyard hath a spot To labor in for life and weary not." HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA RI S H ,PARISH LIFE, The period of the t'ourth rectorship is covered by a series of Parish Scrapbooks, now extending to some eight ·or ten volumes, _which _s:ontain printed records cut from the daily and weekly papers, and much manuscript matter relating to the passing parish history and supplying innumer able minute particulars. The mere enumeration ·of the me morials which have been given fo.r the enrichment of the first Church on Beech Street and the new Church on the corner would require much space, and a full description of them would take a volume. The story of several - as, for example, the Croswell Tablet, the Fountain in the South Porch, the Paul Revere Bell, the Greenleaf Window - is preserved in distinct printed forms. The purchase of the gymnasium lot, so-called, in 1892, materially enlarged our premises and increased the available value of the parish property, insuring room for the new Parish House or rectory of the future. In 1891 the plan was adopted of having the offertory accounted at the close of each service at a treas urer's table, in the Baptistery, officially, and as it were openly before the congregation; a plan which has been adhered to from that time. For many years a certain member of this parish, war den or vestryman by turns, whose name is not for mention here, for the act has been done in ~ecret as it were, has seen to it through the parish visitor that his rector had a freshly laundered surplice every Lord's Day. The attention may be a slight one, too trivial to receive mention in a place like· this; but such belongs in the high rank of parochial thoug~tful nesses. In spiritual avoirdupois its weight is considerable. The same is true of other like faithful but hidden hands which-·have brought flowers very early in the morning of the Lord's Day, for the Lord's Table, in the House· of the Lord. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least .}(1; .. ( .. ·-:; \, ~ •, '•f~\1?t~. ST. JAMES'S CHURCH ( Westerly exposure, showing Edward Abbott Porch) HI S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA RI S H of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Examples are these which in the same spirit have been duplicated in many other forms. When the fourth rectorship began, the service of praise in St. James's Church was led by a mixed choir of volunteers. Vested choirs of men and boys were not common then in the Diocese _of Massachusetts. At an early day effort was made to improve the music and extend the habit of congre gational singing. ·Vocal instruction was provided for· auch as were willing to receive it, first by Miss Helen Russell, then by Miss Carrie Kidd, chiefly among the children and young .people. In October, 18 So, the little choir of men and women was augmented for the first time by four boys, and began to assemble in the vestry room, to enter the Church in a body at the beginning of service. The following year the choristers were divided, the girls and women occupying sea ts in the North Transept, the boys and men in the South. In I 8 84 a choir of sixteen boys and men was formally in stalled ; enlarged and improved accommodations were pro vided for them in the chancel; and their vesting followed. The choir has sung with the Diocesan Choir Guild at various festivals, has given festivals of its own in the Parish Church, and has given occasional entertainments of music for p~ro chial or other objects. The list of organists is a long -one. Upon it will be pleasantly recalled the names of Miss Foster, Charles N. Harris, Everett Truette, Charles Swinscoe, Percy Garratt, Mrs~ Kensel, Ernest Douglas, Alexander Forsyth, Mary E. Chamberlain, and Philip B. Dallinger. For much of the time the large proportion of choristers have given their services. The music at St. James' s, while never a pro fessional display or a commercial commodity, has generally been reverent, hearty, and inspiring, comparing favorably with that at many of the churches of our communion in this vicinity. The organ recitals given for many years on Satur day afternoons in Lent have been a pleasant feature, if at first a novel one, and have set an example which has been followed elsewhere. For more than fifteen years, through 85 HIS TORY OF S T. J 4 MES·' S PARISH many changes, one constant voice, that· of Mr. Howard E. Whiting, has especially enriched our service of song; and the choir names of Drake, Torrey, and Anderton in par ticular are to be gratefully remembered. PARISH FUNDS That the parish has been a saving parish as well as a spending parish is evinced by the number and value of the special funds which have been started during these last twenty-five years, and some of which are still accumulating for the future, and in other cases for the present, benefit of the parish and its manifold work. A list of these funds follows, with their approximate value at the time of this writing, except in one or two cases where it is not now practicable to state the amount. The Floy Fund. -This was begun fully twenty years ago with the gift of half a dollar from a child ( Miss Florence Beard) as a thank-offering for recovery from ill ness. Some small sums have been added to it, but it has grown chiefly by interest, and is to be left growing until it "comes of age" by reaching the round amount of $1000, when the income of it can be used by the rector for pious and charitable purposes at his discretion. Present value, about $165. Burial Lot Fund. - For. meeting extraordinary ex penses in connection with the use . of the parish burial lot, and adding to the same as needed. · About $ 2. 5o. Young Men's Guild Room Fund.-Begun in 1892. with .the proceeds of a course of lectures given under the auspices of the Young Men's Guild, and to be devoted to providing a suitable room for the young men in the new or enlarged Parish House of the future. About $130. . -·- - Choir Room Fund. - For providing a similar room for the choir. About $60. 86 HISTORY OF ST. JA.MEs~s PARISH New Land Fund. - About $2.00. Piano Fund. - Growing out of the treasury of the Women's Guild, an organization disbanded some years since. Towards a new piano for the Parish House. About $30. New Parish House Fund. -Above $600. Rectory Fund. - Consisting of birthday offerings from the children of the Greenleaf School. About $30. Edward Abbott Endowment Fund. - Started by the rector in 1897, and named by the treasurer of that time, Mr. H. L. Carstein. About $7 5. Bell Tower Fund. - For properly housing the Paul Revere Bell, which now seems to have found a permanent resting-place on the floor of the Church. About $ 1 2. The Foxcroft Fund. - Founded by the children of the late Rev. Francis A. Foxcroft, with a gift of $100, in mem ory of their fath~r, January 26, 1893. One-half of the income from this fund may be used for the Paddock Me morial. The other is to be added to the principal until the fund reaches the amount of $1000, when the entire income may be so used. Present value, about $140. ·The Collins Fund. - Founded by Mr. Frederick K. Collins in memory of his mother, Mrs. J ~ne Kelly Collins. The income is used for the ·purposes of the Paddock Me morial. $400. The Rest Fund. - Founded in 1902 with a gift to the rector, in trust, of $ 500, " to afford rest, recreation, and change of scene and air to persons in need of the same, primarily those of St. James's Parish, but not such exclu sively, and both children and adults." Not less than one quarter of the annual income is to be added to the principal until· the latter has reached the amount of $ 5ooo, when the HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PA RISH entire income may be so used. This fund is administered in connection with the Paddock Memorial. The present value is something over $800. · In addition to· the above funds, which have been de rived from a variety of miscellaneous sources, the late Mrs. Greenleaf, in her last wjll and testament, made the following bequests in the interests of the parish: "Fourth. --I bequeath the following sums: . . .. - " Twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) to the Trustees of Donations to the Protestant Episcopal · Church of the Diocese of Massachusetts, • . • tu set aside two thousand dollars ($2,000) as a chancel repair fund, and to expend the income current or ac cumulated thereof for the repair of the memorial chancel, including the repair and care of the font and of the organ of the new chun;h edifice of the parish of St. James Church, North Cambridge, Massa chusetts, and to set aside the balance of said twenty-five thousand dollars ($25~000) as a rector's salary fund, and to apply the net income thereof towards the salary of the rector for the time being of said parish...... "Five thousand dollars ($5·,000) to the Cambridge Hospital, to establish a free bed, to be at the disposal of the rector for the time being of said St. James ~arish, and to be called the St. J atnes Bed. . . . - . . " Five thousand dollars ($5,000) to said St. James Church, for use in the charitable work of said parish, now carried on under the name of the Paddock Memorial." 1 A LAYMEN'S PA~SH A truer word was never spoken than by B1shop Law rence in our Parish House in 1903, when he said that· St. James's Parish had been preeminently "a laymen's parish." It has owed much, very much, to the large body of intelli gent and faithful men and women wh(! in various ways, offi .. 1 By vote of the vestry, the $5000 left for the work of the Paddock Memorial has been placed in the hands of the Trustees of Donations, the income only to be paid over by them to the order of the vestry, to be expended under their direction for the purpose named. 88 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A-ME S ' S PA RI S H cially or otherwise, have served its interests. Let us not forget the sextons, who can do so much to make or mar the comfort, good nature, and peace of rectors, congrega tions, guilds, and meetings - Baker, Dow~s, Smith, Rowe, Small, and Bramley. The lists of vestrymen from 1866 to the present time follow : 1866- 1867 Wardens: Joseph H. Rice, George A. Meacham. Treasurer and Clerk: Benjamin R. Woodward. Y estrymen: Heney Partridge, .George ,v. Bartlett, William Haddon, Ramsay Clark, Charles B. Tower. 1867- 1868 Senior Warden: Joseph H. Rice; Junior Warden: George A Meacham. Treasurer and Clerk: Benjamin R. Woodward. Y estrymen: George W. _Bartlett, William Haddon, Ramsay Clark, Charles B. Tower, George Vincent. 1868- 1869 Wardens: Joseph H. Rice, George A. Meacham. Treasurer and Clerk: Benjamin R. Woodward. Y estrymen: Ramsay Clark, George W. Bartlett, James M. Barker, George I. Vincent, Benjamin R. Woodward. 1869- 1870 Wardens: Joseph H. Rice, George A. Meacham. Treasurer and Clerk: George I. Vincent. 'J7 estrymen: J arnes M. Barker, Ramsay Clark, George Vincent. 1870 - 187 l Wardens: Joseph H. Rice, George A. Meacham. Treasurer and Clerk: George I. Vincent. Vestrymen: George Vincent, George Dexter, James M. Barker. 89 HIS TORY OF ST. JAM ES'S PA RI SH 1871 - 1872 Wardens: Joseph H. Rice, George Vincent. Treasurer and Clerk: Ge()rge I. Vincent. Vestrymen: Geor-ge A Meacham, James M. Barker, William H. Sherman, Thomas Locke, J. S. Foster. 1872 - 1873 Wardens: Joseph H. Rice; George Vincent. Treasurer and Clerk: George I. Vincent. Vestrymen: George A. Meacham, James M. Barker, _William H. Sherman, Thomas Locke, T. S. Foster, L. H. Whitney. Collector: George Vincent. 1783 - 1874 Wardens: James M. Barker, George H. Mullin. Treasurer: James M. Barker. Clerk: George H. Mullin. Collector: James W. Maguire. Vestrymen: Thomas Locke, Theodore S. Foster, James W. Maguire. 1874- 1875 Wardens: James M. Barker, G~rge H. Mullin. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. C Zerk: George H. 1\,1 ullin. Vestrymen: Col. Meacham, Col. Foster, T. Marvin, C. R. Woods, Levi R. Greene, James Maguire. 1875- 1876 Wardens: James M. Barker, George H. Mullin. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph C. Bruce. Vestrymen: Thomas Marvin, George·. A Meacham, Charles R. Woods, Levi R. Greene, Daniel McNamara. 1876- 1877 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Daniel Mc.. Nama:ra. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk :_Joseph C. Bruce. Yestrymen: George A Meacham, Levi R. Greene, Charles R. Woods, William H. Harrington, Philip R. Ammidon, Edward L. Bea.rd, John Clarkson, James Hulse, Joseph Newman. 90 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARl8H · 1877 - 1878 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles R. Woods. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney.1 Clerk: Joseph C. Bruce. Vestrymen: Philip R. Ammidon, . John Clarkson,· Levi R. Greene, James Hulse, A A McCallum, Joseph Newman, Ralph Patrick, John C. Souther. 1878- 1879 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles. ·R. Woods. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph C. Bruce. Y estr11men: Philip R. Ammidon, Edward L. Beard, John Clarkson, Levi R. Greene, James Hulse, Joseph Newman, Albert S. Pills bury, Henry M. Prichard, James A Tyng, Francis -C. Bacon. 1879- 188o Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles R. Woods. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph C. Bruce, L. H. Whitney. Y estrymen: Philip R:-Ammidon, E. L. Beard, Levi R. Greene, Silas Holland, James Hulse, Joseph Newman, Albert S. Pillsbury, Henry M. Prichard. 188o- 1881 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles R. Woods. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph Newman. Vestrymen: Ed~·ard L. Beard, A S. Pillsbury, James Hulse, Henry M. Prichard, J. A Dodge, C. H. Coffin, H. C. Wilson, Levi R. Greene, Silas Holland. 1881 - 1882 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles R. Woods. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph Newman. 1Edward L Beard was elected treasurer, but did not se?Ye. 91 HI 8 TORY OF 8 T. JAME 8 '8 PA RI 8 H Vestrymen: E. L. Beard, A S. Pillsbury, J arnes Hulse, N. L. Allen, C. H. Coffin, J. A. Dodge, Charles Swinscoe, Ralph Patrick, Levi R. Greene, H. T. Fellows. 1882 - 1883 Senior Warden: James M. Barker; Junior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A Dodge. ,, Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph Newman. . Vestrymen: C. H. Coffin, A S. Pillsbury, 0. B. Paine, H. T. Fellows, Ralph Patrick, N. L. Allen, J. A Dodge, Charles Swinscoe, J axnes E. Cutler, J. Q. Bennett. 1883 - 1884 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A Dodge. :Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph Newman. Yes try men: C. H. Coffin, N. L. Allen, Ralph Patrick, A. S. Pills bury, 0. B. Paine, W. L. Dodge, Charles Swinscoe, J. E. Cutler, C. F. Conant. 1884 - 1885 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior · Warden: John A Dodge. Treasurer: L. H. Whitney. Clerk: Joseph Newman. Vestrymen: Wm. L. Dodge, A B. Tobey, Charles F. Conant, E. L. Beard, James E. Cutler, Wm. P. Richards, Ralph Patrick, Albert S. Pillsbury, 0. B. Paine. 1885 - 1886 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: Joseph Newman. Vestrymen: Charles F. Conant, W. P. Richards, C. D. Bray, Wm. L. Dodge, Albert S. Pillsbury, J. W. Trafton, George Henry, W. C. Holt, J. R. Webber. 92 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S P A RISH 1886- 1887 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: J. S. Burton. Vestrymen: W. C. Holt, Wm. L. Dodge, A S. Pillsbury, Charles F. Conant, J. W. Trafton, C. D. Bray, W. P. Richards, Joseph Newman, C. S. Whitehome. 1887 - 1888 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John, A. Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: J. S. Burton. Vestrymen: W. L. Dodge, J. W. Trafton, C. D. Bray, W. C. Holt, J. A. Shedd, C. S. Whitehome, W. P. Richards, B. H. Mor rison, W. H. A Davidson, Edwin P. Adams, A S. Pillsbury, E. W. L. Nichols. 1888- 1889 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A. Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: J. S. Burton~- Yestrymen: J. W. Trafton, C. D. Bray, E. P. Adams, W. L. Dodge, J. A. Shedd, E. W. L. Nichols, W. P. Richards, W. H. A. Davidson, W. C. Holt, C. S. Whitehome, A R. Torrey, _W. C. Lane. 1889- 1890 Senior· Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: J. S. Burton. Vestrymen: C. D. Bray, E. P. Adams, W. C. Lane, E. W. L. Nichols, J. W. Trafton, J. A Shedd, W. H. A Davidson, C. S. Whitehorne, W. C. Holt, A R. Torrey, W .. L. Dodge. 1890 - 1891 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: John A. Dodge. Treasurer: A. B. Tobey. Clerk: J. S. Burton. 93 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J .J. ME S'S PA RISH Yestrymen: E. P. Adams, J. A Shedd, A. R. Torrey, C. ·o. Bray, J. W. Trafton, Geo. W. Bouve, C. L. Whitehorne, H. L. Carstein, W. L. Dodge, E. \V. L. Nichols, George Henry, W. H. A Davidson; W. C. Holt. 1891 - 1892 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: A. B. Tobey. Treasurer: H. L. Carste1n. Clerk: J. S. Burton. Yestrymen: A R. Torrey, J. B. Palmer, L. R. Greene, C. D. Bray, W. E. Hutchins, J. A Shedd, C. S. Whitehome, G. W. Bouve, M. J. Stone, J. W. Trafton, M. J. Chapin, George Henry. 1892 - 1893 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: A. B. Tobey. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: J. S. Burton. Yestrymen: L. R. Greene, A R. Torrey, C. D. Bray, J. W. Traf ton, C. S. Whitehome, M. J. Chapin, J. B. Palmer, M; J. Stone, George Henry, J. A Shedd, W. E. Hutchins, G. W. Bouve, Philip S. Abbot. 1893 - 1894 Senior Warden: Charles R. Woods; Junior Warden: A B. Tobey; Senior Warden: A. B. Tobey; Junior Warden: L. R. Greene. Treasurer~- H. L. Carstein. Clerk: A. R. Torrey. Yestrymen: J. A. Shedd, L. R. Greene, P. S. Abbot, C. D. Bray, J. W. Trafton, J. S. Burton, M. J. Chapin, M. J. Stone, W. C. Lane, C. S. Whitehome, D. B. Macomb, George Henry, D. H. Fowler. · 1894- i895 Senior Warden: A. B. Tobey; Junior Warden: L. R. Greene. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: A R. Torrey, H. A Norton. Yestrymen: J. A. -Shedd, P. S. Abbot, C. D. Bray, W. C. Lane, . J.--s. Burton, J. W. Trafton, J. B. Palmer, M. J. Chapin, D. B. Macomb, E. A Hooper, C. S. Whitehome, D. H. Fowler, W .. A Lingley. 94 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARI'SH · 1895 - 1896 Senior Warden: A B. Tobey; Junior Warden: L. R. Greene. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: H. A Norton. Vestrymen: J. S. Burton, D. B. Macomb, C. D. Bray, E. A. Hooper, W. A. Lingley, J. B. Palmer, M. J. Chapin; J. A Shedd, W. C. Lane, D. H. Fowler, AR. Torrey, J. H. Low, J.M. Wood. 1896 - 1897 Senior Warden: A. B. Tobey; Junior Warden: C. D. Bray. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: H. A Norton. Vestr,,men: W. A. Lingley, J. B. Palmer, J. H. Low, J. S. Burton, M. J. Chapin, E. A. Hooper, D. B. Macomb, W. C. Lane, N. L. Allen, A. R. Torrey, H. E. Whiting, H. P. Blackman. 1897 Senior Warden: A. B. Tobey; Junior Warden: L. R. Greene. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: H. A Norton. Vestrymen: J. S. Burton, J. H. Low, J. B. Palmer, E. A. Hooper, W. A. Lingley, C. D. Bray, H. P. Blackman, H. E. Whiting, M. J. Chapin, -lV- P. Pitman, A K. Tapper, H. G. 0. Wey mouth, J. A. Dodge. 1898 Senior Warden: A. B. Tobey; Junior Warden: L. R. Greene. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein.- Clerk: .A. K. Tapper. Vestrymen: H. P. Blackman, W. A. Lingley, C. D. Bray, E. A Hooper, H. A Norton, J. S. Burton, J. H. Low, J. B. Palmer, H. G. 0. Weymouth, "\V. P. Pitman, M. J. Chapin, J. A Dodge, J. E. Skilton. 1899 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: J. B. Palmer. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: A K. Tapper. Vestrymen: L. R. Greene, J. H. Low, H. A. Norton, E. A Hooper, H. G. 0. Weymouth, H. P. Blackman, W. A. Lingley, H. E. Whiting, C. D. Bray, W. P. Pitman, A B. Tobey, John A Dodge, L. F. Low. 95 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH 1900 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton ; Junior Warden: J. B. Palmer. Treasurer: H. L. Carstein. Clerk: A K. Tapper. F estrymen: H. P. Blackman, C. D. Bray, E. A. Hooper, H. G. 0. Weymouth, J. H. Low, W. A. Lingley, J. A Dodge, W. P. Pitman, H. A Norton, L. F. Low, J. E. Skilton, Richard Ward. · 1901 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: H. A Norton ; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman. Clerk: F. M. Jones. Vestrymen: H. P. Blackman, C. D. Bray, E. A. Hooper, H. G. 0. Weymouth, J. H. Low, W. A. Lingley, J. A. Dodge, J. B. Palmer, E. J. Sheffield, L. R. Greene, R. T. Robinson, W. A Benton. - 1902 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman. Clerk: F. M. Jones, C. A Swinerton. Vestrymen: H. P. Blackman, C. D. Bray, E. A. Hooper, H. G. 0. Weymouth, J. B. Palmer, L. R. Greene, R. T. Robinson, J. A. Dodge, J. E. Skilton, H. E. Whiting, H. A Norton, Richard Ward, W. A. Benton. 1903 Senior Warden: E. J. Sheffield; Junior Warden: J. S. Burton. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman. Clerk: C. A. Swinerton. Vestrymen: J. B. Palmer, L. R. Greene, R. T. Robinson, J. A. Dodge, J. E. Skilton, H. E. Whiting, H. A Norton, Richard Ward, W. A. Lingley, J. H. Low, W. P. Richards, C. H. Foster. 1904 S entor Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman. CZerk: C. A. Swinerton. Vestrymen: H. A. Norton, W. A Lingley, H. P. Blackman, H. G. 0. Weymouth, C. H. Foster, W. P. Richards, C. D. Bray, H. E. Whiting, Richard Ward, J. H. Low; J. E. Skilton, G. E. Carstein. 96 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH 1905 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman. Clerk: C. A. Swinerton. Vestrymen: H. P. Blackman, C .. D. Bray, H. G. 0. Weymouth, Richard Ward, C. H. Foster, W. A Lingley, J. H. Low, W. P. Richards, N. L. Allen, Levi R. Greene, L. W. Hoyt, N. C. Metcalf. 1go6 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: W. P. Pitman, C. A Swinerton. Clerk: C. A. Swinerton, N. ·c. Metcalf. Vestrymen: J. B. Palmer, F. M. Jones, S. C. Northrup, C. D. Bray, H. G. 0. Weymouth, Richard Ward, N. C. Metcalf, N. L. Allen, L. R. Greene, H. P. Blackman, L. W. Hoyt, C. H. Foster, H. A. Norton. 1907 Senior Warden: E. J. Sheffield ; Junior Warden: J. S. Burton. Treasurer: C. A Swinerton. Clerk: N. C. Metcaff: Yestrymen: W. A. Benton, H. P. Blackman, J. H. Low, W. P. Richards, J. B. Palmer, C. H. Foster, F. M. Jones, S. C. Northrup, Levi R. Greene, N. L. Allen, H. A Norton, L. -VV. Hoyt. 1908 Senior Warden: J. S. Burton; Junior Warden: E. J. Sheffield. Treasurer: C. A Swinerton. Clerk: N. C. Metcalf. Vestrymen: G. M. Andrews, C. D. Bray, J. A. Dodge, R. R. Lingley, W. A. Benton, H. P. Blackman, J. H. Low, W. P. Richards, J. B. Palmer, N. L. Allen, W. L. Wells, S. C. Northrup. 97 HIS T O R Y O F · S T. J A ME S' S PA RISH HELPERS OF OUR WORK The proximity of -the Episcopal Theological School on Brattle Street has naturally afforded the parish some ad vantage in the way of assistance along the more spiritual lines of its work, and of its students a large number as lay readers, as well as in earlier years some of its professors, have been identified more or less with our public services or our Sunday-school. The list of licensed lay readers, includ ing several who were not members of the Theological School but men of business and belonging· to the parish, includes the fallowing names, those who subsequently entered the ministry being marked with a* : 1879. Frederick Charles Cowper.* Albert S. Pillsbury. . 1881. Charles Morris Addison.* Charles Luke Wells.* Horace E. Scudder. 1882. John Wallace Suter.* 1883. Henry Wood.* 1886. James Porter Ware.* 1887. E. W. L. Nichols. Llewellyn Humphreys. 1888. Francis Augustus Foxcroft.* 1889. William Henry Jones.* 1890. William Angus Hamilton. 1892. Clifford Standish Griswold. William Samuel Winslow Raymond.* Marshall Everett Mott.* Adrian Randolph J;Jennett Hegeman.* I 893. Chauncey Hayden Blodgett.* Asaph Swift Wicks.* 1894, Logan Herbert Roots.* Edward Henry Newbegin.* 189 5. James Alonzo Shedd. Howard Earle Whiting. , Willis Breckinridge Holcombe.* Charles William Griffith Lyon.* 1898. Clifford Fyffe Gregg.* 1900. Homer Worthington Starr.* 1904. Wood Robert Stewart.* I 905. Henry Sherman Smart. HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH ASSISTANT MINISTERS Generally speaking, the parish has been fortunate in the assistant ministers whose services it has shared; some of them "volunteers," others "regulars"; all .of them holding a recognized place in our corporate history or in our per sonal and grateful recollection. First in the line was the Rev. F. A. Foxcroft, Senior, who with his family was a resident member of the parish from its inception, and ~hose figure was for many years almost as familiar in the chancel as the rector's own. The Rev. Dexter Potter was not a member of the parish, bJit was a resident of Cambridge, and frequently officiated in the early days.. The Rev. William Warland, like Mr. Croswell a retired clergyman living in Cambridge, rendered much friendly aid at the be ginning of the present rectorship, the last public service in which he took part being one at the Chapel, West Somer ville, in I 880. The stately personality of the Rev. Dr. George W. Porter those who knew him or ever saw him will never forget, familiar to us and beloved as he was from about 1886 to his-death in 1898. He was almost constantly in our chancel during these years, by the rector's side, at his right hand indeed, until failing health kept him at home in Lexington from the House of God. He loved St. Jarnes's and St. James's loved him. The Rev. Samuel G. Babcock, now the Archdeacon of the Diocese, was a constant helper during his residence at the Theological Schoo1 between I 8 89 and 1891, and for a time in 1890 during the absence of the rector was minister in charge. The Rev. William H. McGee rendered prolonged assistance in 1890-1 89 I ; the Rev. M. H. Wellman occasional assistance in 1893-1894. The Rev. Francis E. Webster served regularly as assistant minister from I 89 5 to I 896, and then accepted a call to Christ Church, Waltham. Through all these years, that is from about 1895 to his death in 1900, the Rev. John W. Birchmore, another retired clergyman of advanced age, liv... ing in Cambridge, occupied his spare time in the service of 99 HIS TORY · 0 F S T. JAMES' S PA RI 8 H St. James's, doing much visiting, occasionally preaching, and regularly assisting ill the conduct of public worship on the Lord's Day and__ otherwise -as occasion required. His ac curate habits as a scholar and his careful and beautiful pen manship have left indelible traces on our parish register, as his sincerity, his staunch churchmanship, and his sympa thetic nature have left their impression on many hearts. For a year, 1898-1899, the Rev. Percy Gordon, who had rendered some assistance in 1 8 9 3 when pursuing post- . graduate studies at the Theological School, was minister in charge, endearing himself to all by the sweetness of his spirit, the faithfulness of his pastoral ministrations, and his reverent conduct of Divine Service; and we would gladly- have kept him with us permanently ha-d not the summons of an important parish and the wish of the Bishop taken him to New Bedford. In September, I 90 I, the Rev. James Sheerin was in vited by the rector, under the sanction of the vestry, to become assistant minister, under terms and conditions which left either party free to terminate the relation after a year if for any reason either wished so to do. Mr. Sheerin's worJc began nominally with October, but because of illness in his family not actually so until January, 1902. At the end of the trial year, namely, in January, 1903, he elected not to remain, but at his own request, for reasons personal to him, did remain until December following. His term of service therefore was about two years. Since that time the parish has been without an assistant minister. - It may be added here as· a matter not without interest that St. James's has sent at least two of its boys into the Christian ministry ;1 that at least twenty-four of -those who ·have served it as lay readers have become clergymen of the Church; and that its " sisterhood " has furnished wives for one Bishop, and seven other clergymen. 2 1The Rev. Francis· Augustus Foxcroft, ordained April 27, 18g3; the ~ev. Charles William Henry, ordained June 13, 1902. 2Mrs. Bishop Boone (Miss Henrietta Harris); Mrs. W. H. Burbank (Miss Foster); Mrs. T. S. Tyng (Miss Drake); Mrs. F. C. Cowper (Miss 100 MRS. MARY LONGFELLOW GREENLEAF HISTORY OF S T. JAMES~ 8 PARISH MRS. JAMES GREENLEAF 1Through all this varied and animated history, almost from the very beginning, one figure is prominent and domi nant, binding the earlier chapters and the· later into unity and harmony, illustrating with singular effects the beauty and nobility ·of Christian womanhood, and attesting anew the service which a consecrated life can render to the Church and through the Church to the Kingdom of God. , The sunlight ·of our affections falls upon her attenuated but d1gni fied form, her silvery hair, her wrinkled face, her sober garb, until under the light from· without and the light from within she is transfigured before our eyes, her face shines with a radiance not of this world, and her raiment becomes white and glistering like that of her Lord upon the Mount and of the angels and the redeemed of Heaven. Her gracious and fruitful widowhood began with the history of this parish. It was as if God separated her from domestic ties that she might be wedded to the interests of His Kingdom here. Connectecl:with Mr. Croswell ·by marriage, giver of the first Church on Beech Street, faithful helper of the young third rector, unwearying supporter of the fourth rec tor through nearly twenty-five of the nearly twenty-~ight years of his ministry, a very large giver to the building of the second Church on the corner, Sunday-school teacher, visitor in all quarters of the parish, sympathetic with the suffering, friend of all, a constant and devout worshiper, a woman of the highest but at home with the lowest, of im measurable magnanimity and unmeasured generosity, her loving and active connection with this parish as helper or communicant covered nearly three-quarters of these forty Kidd); Mrs. F. A. Foxcroft (Miss Meacham); Mrs. Francis E. Webster (Mrs. Sanger); Mrs. Thomas Jenkins (Miss Prichard); Mr9. ·charles W. Henry (Miss Stella Bray). IThe substance of this paragraph was made use of in the "Word from the Rector," read at the unveiling of the Greenleaf Memorial Win dow, in St. James's Church, March 24, 1go6. IOI HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH years of its history, connected itself more or less closely with all four rectorships, and shared in all its important enterprises. Many men ,have done ·much, many women have done much, to contribute to the growth of St.. James's; but let it not be forgotten that to Mary Longfellow .Greenleaf, the widow of James Greenleaf, more than to any other one person, is due under God the material arid spiritual structure we behold to-day. Without her gifts, her character, her example, her spirit, herself, this parish to human sight could not have been what it has come to be. 102 VII A FIFTH RECTOR 103 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH A FIFTH RECTOR T only remains to close these chapters iri the history of St. James's, Cambridge, with the following "Re I marks" appended to the Parochial Report sent in to the Bishop for the year 1905 :1 "On the 12th day of June, 1905, the rector, having ministered to St. Jaines' s for more than twenty-five years, and feeling that the time had come for him to relinquish his office and work to a younger man, in pursuance of a deliberate and settled purpose tendered his resignation. It is due to the vestry and the parish to say that it was not accepted, but its '"'·ithdrawal requested. The rector felt it best however, to adhere to his decision, consenting to hold over until a successor should be elected and ready to take charge. In the autumn the unanimous choice of the vestry, ratified by the congregation and sanctioned by the Bishop, fell upon the Rev. Robb White, Jr., of the Diocese of Virginia, whose acceptance of the call was received on 2 the 9th of December, to take effect July 1, 1906 , which will be within two months of the time when the retiring rector would have completed twenty-eignt·years in charge of the parish, beginning with his lay readership, September I, 1878. For the prevailing unity and harmony of the parish through all these years; for the loyalty and love of his people; for what they have been enabled to accomplish ; and for the prospect and promise of their future, he wishes in this his last Parochial Report to record his gratitude to Almighty God, Father,· Son, and Holy Ghost." 1Convention Journal for 1906, p. n3. Simultaneously with Mr. White's assuming the rectorship Dr. Abbott he .. came rector emeritus. 105 VIII THE DEATH OF DR. ABBOTT 107 NAVE AND CHANCEL OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARIS.H THE DEATH OF DR. ABBOTT R. ABBOTT passed to the higher life on Sunday, tihe fifth day of April, 1908. He had undergone a D .surgical operation the _previous w,eek, and ·had recu per:a·ted so well that his· family and friends ha-d confident hopes of his recovery. The W,ednesday before his death.be had :been out of his bed, and his parishioners believed that he might leave the hospital by Easter Sunday. The appairent improvem1ent 1continued until Friday evening, when a -change for the worse set in. His wife and his brother, Dr. Lyman Abbott, were at his bed-side when the end came.. The sad news threw the parish and community into deep mourning, which is felt even to-day. The grief was very evident at. the funeral service, which was held on the following Tuesday at St. James' s. Before the chancel, in which he had been the central figure so many years, Dr. Abbott's body, attended by vestrymen, restro in state from I. I. 3 o in the forenoon until 2.30. During those hours, hundreds of people, church men and others, came to pay their silent respects to their former rector and friend - among them being many chil dren. By three o'clock, the hour set for the service, the nave was filled with a representative body of citizens, including parishioners, clergymen of various denominations, city offi cials, and people from distant places. At three o'clock the body was removed from the nave of the church to the chancel, and the sentences of the office for the Burial of the Dead were recited by Bishop Lawrence, who was as sisted in the service by Archdeacon Samuel G. Babcock and Rev. Robb. White, Jr~, the rector of St. James's. During the service the choir sang two hymns of Dr. Abbott's choos ing, "Tarry with· Me, 0 My Saviour" and " Peace, Per- HI 8 TORY OF 8 T. J A MES' S PA RISH f ect Peace." These churchmen, constituting the vestry, es corted the casket from the chancel to the west door and through the Edward Abbott Porc4: Joseph S. Burton, Ed win J. Sheffield,- Charles A. Swinerton, Nelson C. Metca1if, Dr. Nathan L. Allen, Oharles D. Bray, William .P. RichaTds, Joseph B. Palmer, Horace P. Blackman, Levi R .. Greene, Harry A. Norton, Joseph H. Low, Stephen C. Northrup, George M. Andrews, John A. Dodge,· Robert R. Lingley, William L. Wells~ and Walter A. Benton. Following the pall-bearers came the choir singing the recessio~al- "-For All the Saints Who from Their Labors .Rest." The final. funeral rites were held in the afternoon of the next day at the family lot in Brunswick, • Me. Dr. Lyman Abbott officiated, Rev. Robb White, Jr., reading the committal sentences. Besides members of the family an_d the clergymen, there were present two vestrymen from St. J ames's. An immense cross of roses, the offering of the parish, was placed at the head of the grave, and other offer ings from parish organizations and individuals completely covered Dr. Abbott's resting-place. The snow had been falling gently, though steadily, during the service, and a soft white mantle - singularly appropriate in its suggestion - was soon spread over all. TRIBUTES BY CLERGY AND LAITY Minutes adopted by the clergy and the laity follow : The special committee of the clergy of the Diocese of Massachusetts, appointed by Bishop Lawrence on the occa sion of the funeral of the late Rev.·· Edward Abbott, D.D., rector emeritus of St. James' s Church, Cambridge, desire to place on record a memorial of the high esteem, respect, and love in which he was held by all his brethren of the clergy. For nearly thirty years, he was in the forefront of the work of the Church in Massachusetts, serving faithfully and efficiently in many capacities, bringing to every responsibility IIO HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH strength of mind and warmth of heart; exercising executive ability of a rare order and never losing sight of the cause of the Kingdom of God as the directive rule of every course of action. Dr. Abbott's contribution of real fellowship and thoughtful consideration for each one of his brethren of every degree w~s a valuable part of the clerical life of this diocese during the years he spent among us. His gifts of sympathy were large, and his interest in all good works made him one of the strongest missionary forces in the diocese. . Dr. Abbott was a holy man, and in his presence, as ih his heart, things unhallowed · seemed out of place. His is now the ble~sing of the pure in heart. We of the clergy have lost a friend and a brother, and we extend our heart felt sympathy to his family and his friends. (Signed) SAMUEL G. BABCOCK, EDwARD M. GusHEE, LEONARD K. STORRS, FRANCIS E. WEBSTER, ROBB WHITE, JR. REV. ROBB WHITE, JR., SUNDAY, APRIL I 2, I 908, AT MORNING PRAYER It is my hope that on some Sunday morning in the near future there may be found· some one of the friends of Dr. Abbott's youth, who knew him in the prime and pride of his youth and strength, who will render h~re a worthy tribute to the memory of that great and good man. The love and the admiration which I had and have for him, are things of his later declining years. In those years he im pressed me as being the highest type of those sterling and sturdy characteristics that are distinctive of New England and that have made her great. .: Dr. Abbott received from a long line of distinguished ancestors a goodly heritage of highest principle and great ability. j Those fine traits he preserved inviolate, and they found no impairment in him. III HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A MES ' S P A RISH He was not a superficial man. It was reality and not appearance that he sought to get and to have. This trait made him ever painsta~ing and scrupulously careful to be exact in every minutest detail. Among his fellows in the world of scholarship there were many quicker on their feet, and more ready with plausible argument and apt retort than he. But when he did sp,eak, it was always as one with au thority back of him; and men who heard him listened be cause they recognized this. In many branches of labor and learning he was easily the peer of any- in some -respects he seemed to me to be almost without a peer. This same depth of character sometimes put him at a disadvantage. One who met Dr. Abbott casually or care lessly would often find him entirely lacking in those little acts of pleasing that consist in trimming one's sails to suit every wind. But when you took the trouble to search deep beneath the surface, you found yourself in a realm rich in the finest Christian virtues. He liked the good old title " parson " - he earned the older one of " father," for he was a father to this parish, and one whose tender care never faltered or failed while life lasted. Near the beginning of my ministry I had occasion to make mention of my own debt to Dr. Abbott for an un told number of kind offices, both small and great. The days that have passed since then have seen that debt increasing always. We did not always agree about everything, - no;. but we did not harbor our disagreements, and each one of them made me feel the more keenly. the depth of Christian charity and Christian courtesy of the man of God, the Christian gentleman with whom I had to deal. In the providence of God it came to pass that the last time I was to see him I had gone to him as a man goes to his father, to find !n his faithful breast a repository for some things that were on my heart. It was a great privilege. He was a prophet whose vision was clear and decided. With him the call to duty knew no uncertain sound, and no 112 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA RI S \Jl storm ever shook his compass from its guiding. He had faults, for he was human. Doubtless he knew and repented of them all. But they were never the faults that leave be hind the taints of shame. A faithful, fearless priest he was to his people, their servant for Jesus' sake. He has gone to his· Creator. He has now what then he only wished for, a life with Christ in God. ST. J Al\1ES' S VESTRY WHEREAS, it has pleased Almighty God in His wise providence to take from our midst the soul of the Rev. Dr. Edward Abbott, who was the father of this parish for so many years that it may well be said to have known no other; we, the rector, wardens, and vestry, desire to make here, in our minutes, some record of the value of his life and work all those years that he went in and out among us. Dr. Abbott's experience in relation to this parish was a rare one, beginning when he and it were young, and con cluding at his deatb.,__~hen the bright hues of early promise had ripened into worthy realities. Early in his career his piety and his great ability had made his name to be known throughout the Church, and calls came to him, among them one to the highest office in the gift of the Church ; but his charact~r as a true shepherd of Christ's sheep made him feel that his duty lay here, and here he stayed, ever giving and spending without stint all the rich heritage of his life. Those alone who knew Dr. Abbott well can realize under what lasting obligations his self-sacrificing life laid this parish and community. His ability as a preacher was conspicuous, but it is in the inconspicuous daily round of common offices as pastor to his people that the people will remember him longest, and with greatest affection. Truly "there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel." 113 HIS TORY OF S T. J A MES' S PA RISH We recommend that a copy of this minute be sent to the family of Dr. Abbott, and one published in the Cam bridge ~pers, and the_ ,Church Militant and The Ckurch_ mon. (Signed) ROBB WHITE, JR•. , Rector. JOSEPH S. BURTON, · Senior Warden. EDWIN J. SHEFFIELD, Junior Warden. NELSON C. METCALF, . Clerk. St. James's Parish, Cambridge, Mass., April 13, 1908. 114 IX MEMORIAL SERMO~ THE REV. EDWARD ABBOTT, D.D., Rector Emeritus, St. James's Church, Cambridge, Mass. BY THE _REV. A. ST. JOHN CHAMBRE, D.D., Rector of St. Anne's Church, Lowell. Delivered on the invitation of Mrs. Edward Ab~ott, and the Wardens and Vestry of St. James' s Church. Sunday, October I I, 1908. "For he was a good man, and full _of the Holy Ghost and of faith." --Acts XI:24. 115 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH MEMORIAL SERMON DWARD ABB0,1T, Priest in the C:hurch of God .and Doctor in Divinity, was born in Farmington, E Maine, July 15, 1841. H,e was the youngest son o.f Jacob and Harriet Vaughan Abbott. His brorhers were Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, who ,died in 1890, Austin Abbott, LL.D., and the Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.Q.: If .his motlier, Harriet Vaughan, was, as I •assume, of the Welsh family of that name, E,dward ha:d in his vieins rhe blood of a long line of ·princely and illustrious men and worn.en - characterized by sreadf a!stness of purpose, high ideals, and splendid courage. His im mediate ancestors were of that New England stock that has been the impelling force in all that has made for the civil and religious liberties which we e11joy to-day. His home training was of the best. He was prepared for college, partly under the tuition of his brothers, and partly at the Farmington Academy. The University of New York, which bestowed upon him in 1890 the honorary degree of Doctor in Theology, graduated him Bachelor in Arts in I 8 60. He then entered the Andover Theological Seminary, preparatory to becoming a minister of the Congregational Church. His ordination as a Con gregationalist took place on July 28, 1863. Prior to this, however, he spent some montps with the Army of the Potomac, during the Civil War, in the service of the United States Sanitary Commission. To his splendid and self sacrificing work there, I can bear personal testimony. As a Congregationalist he -labored with the Boston public in stitutions, and in 186 5 organized what has since become the Pilgrim Church in Cambridgeport, from the ove-rsight of which he retired, in I 869, to become associate editor of the Congregationalist. From 1877 to 1888 he was editor of the Literary World. He was the editor of this also again 117 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PAR I 8 H from 189 5 to 1903. During the earlier period of his Cam bridge experience he served as a member of the School Board; and he was chaplain of th~ Senate of the Common- weal_th in 1 8 7 2-:7 3. / In these years, however, he was by his reading and meditation bein-g steadily home towa-r,ds this historic Cburch of Christ, to which he conformed in 1878. No sudden im pulse prompted him, and no hope of earthly reward tempted him. He had already achieved an assured and enviable position, and was honored, respected, and loved. - But to see his duty was to respond to its ~all, at whatever cost of mental anguish or material prospects or of the crucifixion of the .affections. How loyal he was to the Church, to its faith and polity, we may presently see more fully. He be lieved in it, not as a merely human, but as a Divine Insti tution, with a divinely appointed three£old ministry, and divinely constituted Sacraments. If, as has been said, he "held always to many of the religious and doctrinal tra ditions of his Puritan ancestry," it was always insofar only as those traditions were in harmony with historic Chris tianity and the "Church idea." It were well if we had more holding to like "traditions" I Thirty years ago, the spirit of what is sometimes termed "modernism" -well so called, as being in opposition to the Vincential formula of what has been believed every where, always, and by all in the Church of God - was seiz ing upon various bodies of Christians. That spirit has blos- somed very fully, and in many of its aspects is away from the individualism for which, for the most part, non-Episcopal bodies have been supposed to stand. There _has been a moving towards, and the assuming of a " common religious consensus " ( whatever that may mean), which possibly may be found to be, and often really is, inimical to what the church of the ages believes, and always has believed, makes for the essentials' of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - of that church-and that gospel which are the same "yesterday, to day, and forever." Dr. Abbott doubtless discerned· the 118 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH " signs of the times," and would range himself where he could, as he thought, better " fight the good fight of faith," and conserve the Church for which the Blessed ·Lord shed His most precious blood. His" life with the Congregationalists was, so far as appears, one of happiness and- usefulness. He had the es teem of his brethren, and their confidence - manifested in the positions of honor in which, from time to time, he was placed. There was no bitterness upon h_is part, and no bitterness on their part, in the separation;:: and love, and good will always prevailed upon either side. , It was a spirit that bespoke nobility, generosity, and appreciation upon the one side· and the other. -- Immediately after his " confirmation " by the Rt. Rev. B. H. Paddock, D.D., of blessed memory, then Bishop of the undivided Diocese of Massachusetts, he was appointed a special lay reader in charge of St. J ames's, then a small and struggling mission in this part of Cambridge. His previous experience in this community was of great service to him. He discerned clearly the work before him, and with characteristi~atience and determination he began and prosecuted his labors. He had a clear purpose in view, and he swerved neither to the right nor to the left. He began to lay foundations broad and deep, that gradually a temple of living souls might arise, carefully instructed in, and spirit ually nourished by " the faith once for all delivered to the saints.,., His foundations were the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, " very God of very God," "the chief corner stone." At this mission, January 8, 1879, he was ordained deacon; and on January 20, 1880, he was made priest, and became canonically rector of the parish. His priesthood was obtained at All Saints' Church in Dorchester. Thence on, he devoted himself body, mind, and soul to his ministry here. In season and out of season, by day and by night, he labored with all diligence and uttermost faithfulness. All this time, however, there was no cherishing of parochial 119 HIS TORY OF S T. J A MES' S PARISH provincialism. He realized that he was a priest of the Church, not simply of a parish, and that while he owed duty to his parish, he also owed duties to the Diocese, and to the Church at large·,, which he had no right, as he had no disposition, to ignore. He soon became a recognized power in the Diocese, and beyond its borders, and positions of responsibility sought l].im. When accepted, the duties of those positions were discharged with earnest zeal, extreme conscientiousness, and often consummate ability. Many places of great opportunity and influence were offered to him. They were sometimes such as no man might lightly disregard; but to Dr. Abbott, who certainly realized their worth, and was not insensible to their honor and im portance, what seemed to him the paramount -claims of St. James's decided him, and he turned away from the beckon!!' ing hand. The strong Christ Church of Detroit, Michigan, desired him as rector. Trinity Church, Columbus, Ohio, entreated him. The City Mission of Boston would have made him superintendent. The General Convention of 1889 elected him as Missionary Bishop of Jedo in Japan. In 1 898 what especially appealed to him was an invitation to accept the chaplaincy of Immanual Church in Geneva, Switzerland. It was an opportunity to indulge in travel, in which he so much delighted, and in the quiet pursuit of studies which the exacting demands of parish life in this country practically prohibit. But to these, and other invitations, the answer was the same. Here was an " open door " ; and he could not, and would not, leave his work. He felt that, given the time and opportunity, a strong and influential parish could be reared in this city. He loved his people. He was conse crated to his work. He was unwilling to forsake the one or the other, whatever the gain to him of position or of honor. How successful he was here I need not endeavor to P 120 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARIS\Jl hearts speak his praise, and very many renewed souls thank God, that under his ministrations they have found that spiritual strength and peace which the world cannot give, and cannot take away. Not ·without cares, not without anxieties, not without sad and trying experiences, not without disappointments, sometimes misunderstandings, not without bitter tears and prayers of agony, were the years of his rectorate here; but these are but the portion that comes to every true servant of God. His sensitive nature felt the pangs, but his faith and courage never wavered, and no one knew him to repine or to speak with bitterness or unkindness. Withal, he had joy - knowing the esteem- and affection in which he was held, and the implicit confidence which this parish unwa ver ingly reposed in his wisdom, his judgment, his moral up rightness, his splendid Christian character. During these years the Diocese claimed his services in various important directions. As a rule, he accepted with out question the duty to which he was called, gladly answer ing the demands upon his time and energies to the utmost of his abilities. Am-2_ng many other positions held by Dr. Abbott, he was for some years a member of the "Standing Committee " of the Diocese, and for a portion of the time its secretary, a most honorable, and sometimes a very ~x acting and trying office. Of his extreme carefulness and con scientiousness as a member of this body, I can speak from personal knowledge, and without reservation. He was, also, a deputy to the General Convention. As dean ,and vice-dean of the " Eastern Convocation," he was held in the highest esteem by the clergy, who naturally turned to him for the historical sermon at its three hundredth meeting, in I 906. His many other offices I will not now take your time in the enumeration. Among them were: " Visitor " to Welles ley College, Trustee of the Society for the Relief of Widows and Orphans. of Clergymen, President ~f Associated Chari ties of Cambridge, President of Cambridge Branch of the Indian Rights Association; Member of the Missionary Coun- 121 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH cil of the General Church, Member of Provisional Com mittee on Church Work in Mexico, President of the Indian Industrial League, President of t4e Cambridge City Mis- sion, etc. - . , Immersed as was this man in church work, like most men whose time and energies seem completely occupied, he, nevertheless, found opportunity for litera,ry work of no mean character. :Ifis literary taste was of the finest, and his· ability as a writer of a high order,:; Whether religious or secular topics engaged his thoughts and pen, he was always p-ertinent and perspicuous. How he was able _to accomplish so much, and in so many directions, and yet never neglect his parochial duties, was always a surprise to his friends. It was possible only because of his methodical habits, and his .-conscientious use of each fleeting hour. "I must work while the day lasts," I have often heard from his lips. " God gives each day for that." The following list, though incomplete, w.iH suggest his fruitfulness, his !husbandry of time, and :his va:ried men tal activities: "A Story in Verse: The Baby's Things"; "A Paragraph History of the United States "; " A Paragraph History of the .....L\.merican Revolution " ; " Revolutionary Times " ; " History of Cambridge " ; " Long Look House "; "Out Doors and Long Look " ; " A Trip Eastward '' ; '' Memoir of J arob Abbott '' ; '' The Finished Cou~: M,ernorial Sermon''; ''The P.ilgrim Series: Sunday-sdhool Lessons " ; "A Brief Memorial: Re becca and Elizabeth R. Abbott " ; " The Croswell Me morial " ; " St. James' s System of Church Teaching " ; " The Bishop's Pastoral"; "Geo. Sherman Conv,erse, D. D.: Me morial " ; " Phillips Brooks : ·Memorial " ; " Japan and Nip pon Sei Kokwai ";" Meet for the Master's Use: Allegory"; " The Bell's Own Story: Historical ''; " Mrs. James Green leaf_: Commemoration "; " John S. Lindsay, D.D.: Me morial " ; " The Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn: Histori cal, Eastern Convocation " ; " Light Houses " ; " The Park man Murder " ; . " Wellesley College " ; " The Androscoggin Lakes " ; " Grand Manan and Quoddy Bay " ; etc. 122 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A. ME S., S P A. RISH In 1906 Dr. Abbott resigned as rector of St. James's, after a continuous service of some twenty-eight years. It was a service that will live in the traditions of the parish, of which he was the first and only ·rector during that long period. It will live, so long as the parish shall exist. On the reluctant acceptance of his resignation, he was constituted Rector Emeritus, thus continuing his relation to this people, and assuring his wise and benignant counsel and direction. He died in Boston, April 5, I 908. In a necessarily very brief, and in a very inadequat~ way ( of which I am fully conscious), I have thus far out lined the life and work of Dr. Abbott. But this account has told but little of the man himself, whatever hints of his character may have been suggested. It remains to speak of him more directly and more closely, by one who certainly was very near to him in many ways, and for a long series of years, and who perhaps understood him as was not the privilege. of many outside of his own family relations. He was a very quiet and unassuming man, very reticent of all that concerned himself or his work. He did not at all reveal hims~lf, save on rare occasions, and in the intimacy of confidential frieri:aship. But how warm-hearted he was, how sensitive to friendship, how ready always lovingly to advise and counsel, how clear-sighted, how rooted and how strong in the faith of Jesus Christ, how ready to endure all, and to give up all for his testim~ny to the truth as he ac cepted and understood it, the writer can bear ample witness. As a pastor he was surpassed by few, if by any. His knowledge of human na~re, a:nd his penetration into the recesses of feeling and motive, enabled him to answer to the requirements of the human heart, whether in admonition and warning, or in spiritual comfort and healing. In the noblest sense and way he was " all things to all men," if thus he might win some to Christ. As a preacher of the Word of God he stood among the highest; but he never exploited himself, or made parade or boast of the really profound knowledge which he pos- 123 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA RISH sessed. His sermons were plain and practical, but built always upon spiritual foundations, in harmony with the faith "as this Church hath received the same," and showing clearly the wideness of his reading, and his deep and trans parent thinking. They were delivered, moreover, with an impressiveness and earnestness, and often a lofty and em passioned eloquence,, that at once commande~ and held the attention of his hearers. If any were not convinced and won by his words, and very many were, yet few failed to recog nize, or to acknowledge, the power and manifest sincerity of the man behind the words. . He never descended to any of the artifices of expression or manner, sometimes obtaining, in order to attract attention. He needed not to do this; he could not. To him "sensationalism_,, was in the nature of vul garity. It was in the nature of faithlessness to the Gospel, and seemed always, as it always is, the degradation of the priestly office, and the lowering of the Divine character and the marring of the Divine beauty of the Church of God. He magnified his office, not for his sake, but for Christ's sake. With dignified fervor he conducted public worship, bearing the sense of the " Beauty of Holiness," and the sacredness of the " House of God," the " place of the habi tation of the Most High." The " Sanctuary " was the " Gate of Heaven " to his soul; and his attitude was ever as one crying, " Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful unto Him, -and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is ever lasting; and His truth endureth to all generations " ; " they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not fa int.'' He had the " courage of his convictions." Where these were involv~d, his obligations to his ordination vows, his lo_y~lty to the Church, its faith, polity, usages, Dr. Abbott stood as upon a rock that could not be moved. There were times - there was a time - when he was tested to the 124 H I S T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S ' S PA RI SH utmost, and sorely beset and tried. As one who stood side by side with him in such an experience, I can bear witness to his steadfastness and faithfulness, and withal of his kindli ness, courtliness, and· charity. No bitter word escaped from him; but there was no shrinking from the cost of his atti tude, and the cost was great! It was the cost of friendships of long standing, and that were very near and dear to his heart; the cost of personal prestige and place; the cost of days and nights of weary thought and painful conflict. True to his conscience, however, he wavered not for a moment.. Others might be ready to yield, not he. Yet was he earnest to discern and to acknowledge what to others might seem a justifiable difference of views or opinions; but to him the integrity of the creeds of the Church must be conserved and maintained : their integrity in the historical and obvious meaning of their statements. Therefore he "contended" for the " Faith once delivered to the saints"; and he saw the triumph of his contest, though the conflict took something out of his life, and I believe out of the length of his days. It was a time that " tried men's souls," of clergy and laymen alike. When the his.tQry shall appear, as one day it may, the meed of praise for them cannot be other than " Well done, good and faithful servants." The loyalty of character which distinguished Dr:. Abbott in his relations to the Church was exemplified in his friendships. No more loyal friend ever lived. He was loyal through evil and through good report. Wrong or disloyalty on the part of others might separate them from him, but he could not, in his heart or in his purpose, be separated from them. This was a state of mind and heart that it was sometimes by his friends difficult to appreciate or to justify. But it was the evidence of a most generous and unselfish and very noble nature. It revealed a Christian grace and strength too seldom to be found. There came to him extreme provocations. When the hand of pretended friendship smote him fiercely, when effort was made to under mine his influence, and to deprive him of the confidence and 125 HIS T O R Y O F 8 T. J A ME S' S PA RI 8 H protection which were his due, yet how kind, how tender, how gentle was his manner of meeting it all I Few heard him ever allude to the subject, only to a few was known the soreness of a wounded spirit. There was no complaint, no anger; only a calm trust in the vindication that God might bring, and did bring, in your loyalty and devotion. What a picture is this of the inner life of one, who to some seemed so aloof, so self-anchored, and not to be trifled with. . The friendship of such a man is a treasure to be stored in memory while memory shall endure ! . Of Dr. Abbott's religious life_ who can speak? Not I. There are some things, in relation to the soul, which are, a~d always must be, "hidden with Christ in God." The secret of what he was, and what he was able to be spiritually, and to do for others, was in his conscious union _with his Lord and Saviour. With him " to live was Christ," " to die was gain.'' No one could know him well, and be much in his presence, without the feeling that here was one who believed, and who lived the life of faith; and as one knew him more and more, there came the consciousness that here was one mellowed; ripened, by the grace that was in him, and by the power of the Holy Ghost. If of any one it could be said to-day, it surely could be said of him, that he " walked by faith "; not, it may be, " having received the promises, but seeing them afar off, and persuaded of them, and embracing them, and confessing himself a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth." " He being dead yet speaketh. '-' Speaketh of "the king in His beauty, in a land ~hat is very far off " - far off, but nigh, to thqse of like precious faith. Of great nobility of nature, of great firmriess of char acter, of indomitable courage, mingled with tender gentle ness, hopefulness, and cheerfulness, the steadfast believer in and servant of Jesus Christ, is the picture of Dr. Abbott that is present to me to-day. He was not an old man. No man is necessarily old at his age. Erect of carriage, firm of foot, strong of voice, with all mental powers under con trol_ and command, of dignified bearing and affable de- 126 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A. ME S'S P .J. R I ~ H mean or, no one could think of him .as other than in the prime of life. It was thus, •if the end must come, that he would desire it. Some of us can but feel, however it may be in our poor human way of· viewing the dispensations of God, that our friend has been prematurely ~aken from us. We can but feel that in his "ta:king away" is a distinct loss to the Church he served so long and so well, and to the interests of this Diocese which was very near to his heart. We know full well, while so speaking, that " men may come, and men may go," but the Church of God "goes on ~for ever." It is not dependent upon any one or all of its ser vants. It has the sure promise of its Lord, that even "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." "Paul may plant, Apollos water, but God gives the increase t " But sure am I that the Church o:wes its meed of praise to this man, who served at its altar without guile. To his family,· and to all who knew and loved him, the loss is deep and keen. We cannot make him dead·. " He is not dead, but sleepeth " ; indeed, after all " There is no death ! ,¥hat seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but the suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death." And yet, and yet 1 We long "For the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still "! "A good man, and full of the Holy Ghost," he has fallen asleep in Christ. He fought a good · fight, he has kept the Faith, he has finished his course. Surely, thei:e is laid up for him the crown which is in reserve for all God's faithful priests. 127 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH I most sincerely wish that a richer, and far more worthy tribute than this could be offered to the memory of one dear to me, and so eminently worthy, _yet every word has been weighed~ and I •am not conscious of exaggeration. Friend and brother, we miss you; and our hearts ache because of the void that remains. But we rejoice in the clear vision, the pe~fect peace, the .enraptured joy, and the patient waiting of the- reunion of sundered ties, that is now thine, in the splendor of the light of Jesus Christ, whom thou seest as He is I - Priest and pastor, loving hearts and prostrate spirits miss thee at the altar, in the chamber of sickness, in the hours of sorrow and trial. Thy wise counsel, thy tender admoni tions, thy strong words of comfort and hope, - these are heard no more. But, thou art serving in the Courts of that Temple not made with hands; and who shall say how He whom thou lovedst here may still use thee to bring healing to the wounded and bleeding hearts of men out of the Paradise of God! Farewell, until we meet. Grant him, 0 Lord, eternal rest; and may light perpetual shine upon him! 128 X A LAYMAN'S TRIBUTE EDWARD ABBOTT, ALWAYS THE FATHER OF His PARISH BY-NELSON CASE METCALF 129 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S' S PA RI 8 H A LAYMAN'S TRIBUTE . . N rhe pages of the foregoing history it is_ noticeab!e -t~at Dr. Abbott dw-ellslong otievents_that precedc:-Jh1s m~n I istry, and speaks with comparative brevity and charac teristic modesty -of ·tihe parochial ~chievements under his juris diction and due to his unfa,iling initiative. 'Dhe parish burden often seemed heavy, but cheered by 1his inspiring word; apd guided by :his wise counsel, doubts vanished and the -task was ta~en up with ren;ewed strength. He never asked ·his people to v,enture where he ha through his literary achievements and let the laurels gained in the pulpit and in church work suffice." To one who knew him well, the truth of these state ments is apparent. The one side of his life, however, which has not been treated intimately is that of his close personal relation with St. James' s Parish, of his fatherly ·rare from its youthful years to the !ime when he released it reluctantly to the hands of his successors. Looking back to those days, one readily believes that the young clergyman must have been a wonderful watcher over his parish. The writer's recollection of Dr. Abbott dat~s from about 1885; before I knew him as a friend, I remember to have seen him about the parish, and he always stopped to speak to me and to other boys. From that in formal meeting, still as a boy, I went to sing in the Greenleaf Chapel ChQir. It was at the time of the beginning of a boy choir at St. J ames's; for some months we did not have vest ments even. Dr. Abbott's interest in the enterprise was keen; he was invariably at rehearsals and often played the organ. It was through the choir that many boys, in those times, came to be interested in the Church. In most cases, moreover, they went on to confirmation, and not a few of them have since served in the vestry. With them came their parents. But the choir was only one means of winning people. By his diligent visiting, by his friendliness towards the com munity, and by his qualities of leadership, did Edward Abbott develop St. James's. Starting with one church build ing, the Greenleaf Chapel, he secured funds which resulted in the building of the Parish House in I 8 84, and in I 8 8 9, of the comfortable and substantial Church, which was built not alone for the present. It was the rector's ingenuity that led to the organization of a number of institutions, each of which served its purpose in the growing parish. In all of them, his guiding, hand was felt. With a sort of dual personafrty, he went out after his people, he won them, and then he received them in the Church home, the most gracious 132 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARISH host imaginable. Thus he built the parish on strong spiritual lines, and arranged, at the same time, reasonable social activities for his church family. As one contemplates two decades and more of St. James's history, he cannot help reiterating the term " father " in association with Dr. Abbott. Under him, while conforming to· all the canons of the Church, the parish had, nevertheless, an unusually strong congregational unity. The relationship of father and family was always evident. There were times when one or another of the family was disobedient, and needed ·re straint or punishment, and the issue was always met decidedly but temperately. So, while he was a prominent man in the public life and one whose opinion was valued throughout the Diocese and beyond, it was in the every-day affairs, the homely and usual duties faithfully performed that those who knew him best loved him most. In 1889 the family began to worship in the "new" Church. Those who had been little children at the beginning of his rectorship were getting up to manhood and woman hood and marriage. Thus additions came to the parish; and while it was, aQd is, in the midst of a somewhat shifting community, most people who went away did not forget their old rector, but often came ack to the homestead for a visit. With the removal from the Chapel to the Church came a general expansion and enlarged interests ; the family grew, but still die father kept in close touch with all the varying conditions and different personalities. He liked to consider this growth and often, from the pulpit, would refer to the small beginnings of the parish and trace the development by years and decades, dwelling at length on the particular part played by a certain family or individual. There were some church offices which especially seemed to appeal to him. The celebration of the Holy Communion was always prominent in its significant interest. The ob servance of All Saints' was remarkably impressive as led by him, for he made it always a memorial service, in fact. There were joys and sorrows in his church family, and he 133 HIS TORY OF S T. JAMES' S PARISH .• was in all of them, with ready rejoicing or ready comfort. Of his own sorrows, which were many, he said little. Sunday after Sunday, year after year, it was the privi lege of many of us, as boys and rnen, to precede him in the choir processio1:1 a·nd to sit near him in the stalls. From the Chapel to the Church, through the growth of years, we al_l walked hand in hand with him; we were used to him; al though other conditions changed, with him at our head _there was always the wholesome, comforting family feeling; we· did not contemplate his leaving us. There -came a time, however, a few years back, when he showed signs of break ing health. His choice of hynins often suggested the ending, the completion of an appointed task; there was no sense of sadness in it - it held rather the satisfaction which belongs to accomplishment. He sought rest at his country P-lace in New Hampshire, and, still mindful of his people, he pro vided summer vacations there for many of them, especially the children. His affection for children was marked, and it was not surprising that, on the day when he lay in silent dignity hefore the chancel, where he had so long been the domi~ant figure, hundreds of little ones stole softly into the Church to pay their last respects to ·their friend. On the 15th of July, 1906, Dr. Abbott's sixty-fifth birthday, just after he had yielded up his leadership to accept the well-deserved post of Rector ·E:meritus, a few persons from his church family gathered at his Wilton home and received the sacrament from his hands - a most memor able occasion. During the summer of a year ago, with ap parently renewed health, he administered the affairs of the parish in his customarily capable way. Th_e end was nearer than we realized. Although he is gone, his traditions, his precepts, and his spirituality still regulate the goings and comings of his church family. The zeal and love of his nearly thirty years' service is alive in the parish and in the community, and his memory is as fragrant as the pines, which watch faithfully over the spot where he lies resting from his labors. 134 ST.l.'JAMES'S CHURCH ( In Winter) HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME 8' S P '1. RI 8 H PRINCIPAL DATES IN THE HISTORY OF ST. JAMES'S PARI_SH, CAMBRIDGE 1864. Christmas Evening. First service of St. James's Mission, North Cambridge, in Atwill's Hall, North Avenue, corner of Russell Street. 1866. June 18. Organization of the Parish. _ _ _ June 18. Old Bank Building leased, to be fitted up for· a chapel. 1870. Land bought for a church site on Beech Street. 1871. April. 1\Ir. Croswell's resignation. April. The Rev. \V. H. Fultz rector until July, 1873. June 21. Corner stone of Church on Beech Street laid. December: 21. Church consecrated by Bishop Eastburn. 1873. September. The Rev. T. S. Tyng invited to take charge of the Parish for one year. 1874. April. Mr. Tyng elected rector. October. Services begun in Arlington. 1876. February. Work begun on St. James's Chapel, Newbury Street, West Somerville. 1878. July. Resignation of the Rev. Mr. Tyng. September 1. The Rev. Edward Abbott takes charge of the Parish under lay-reader's license from Bishop Paddock. 1879. January 8.- Mr. Abbott ordained deacon. . October I. Plan for a "Parish House" :first proposed. December 22. Mr. Abbott becomes can_onically rector. 1881. June. Purchase of a lot of land for the Parish House. 1883. June. Ground broken for the Parish House,. and foundation finished. 1884. February 26. Formal opening of the Parish House by Bishop Paddock, with a " Feast of Dedication." First Sunday after Easter. A choir of men and boys enter on duty. 1885. !Ylarch 9. Contributions asked for the purchase of the corner lot, as a site for a new church. March 28. The " corner lot " secured. December. New vestry built, connecting Church and Parish House. 1886. October 15. The choir vested. 135 HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S'S PA RISH 1888. June i 8. Ground broken for the new Church. August 29. The corner stone of the new Church laid by the Bishop of Central New York, the Right Reverend F. D. Huntington, I?.D., acting for the Bishop of Massa . chusetts, in the absence of the latter. 1889.. November 5. Formal opening of the new Church, Bishop Paddock officiating and preaching in the morning; Dr. Phillips Brooks in the evening .. I 892. April I 8. -The additional land north of the Chapel on Be.ech Street secured. I 900. June 8. Consecration of the new Church. 1905. June 12. Resignation of Dr. Abbott. '~ December. The Rev. Robb White, Jr., accepts the call of the vestry to become the :fifth. rector of St. James's. 1906. July 1. Dr. Abbott's resignation and Mr. White's accept ance take effect simultaneously, leaving no gap between, and Dr. Abbott becomes Rector Emeritus: 1908. April 5. Death of Dr. Abbott. September 1. Mr. White's resignation takes effect, and on the same day Rev. William Edward Gardner becomes rector of the parish. 136 Comparative Statistics of St. J ames's Parish from 1865 to 1904 Based on the Convention Reports Prepared by L. H. Whitney u • - ., 0 .c: 0 .C U -< ID 0 ...... 0 .c: 0 .... - a11 s:: 0 ID S: 0 ,...... ID 0 C as .c: C ... C ,...-0 Ill Ill .,6 u u .s .c: .::: .5? -c, C .C: ·- rn -w .~ CD .... C:: 0 Ill al ...u -,... Cl .... -E"' ·a ::r ·- ::r as ~i: ·-0, ;ii,,. .c ~ :; .C Cl al 0 ·- clS ... = as f-1 .c c= e "O ·.: ~ P-4 ·.: a .c ~ ~ C .... 0 0) -; 0 e C -C c> C ... ,... 0 ::s o._u 0 a, u ::r 8 u rn U.c U-~ u C 0 )1- NOTE - 1869 and 1870. Special donations for purchase of land for a chapel on Beech Street included. 1871. A church built upon the Beech Street land at private expense of Mrs Greenleaf - probably 514.000. not included. 1876. Cost of land on Newbury Street. Somerville, upon which to build a chapel for St. James's Mission. Cost of the chapel met by the rector outside of the parish. leaving a small mortgage to be taken up by the parish. 1882-3-4-5. Land bought in rear of chapel on Beech Street, North Cambridge. upon which was built a Parish House. HIS T O R Y O F S T. J A ME S 'S PA R IS H • Greenleaf Memorial Chancel to Mr. James Greenleaf. The entire Chancel. including Choir. Chancel Aisles. Sanctuary. Organ. and Chancel Furniture. A. Edward Abbott Porch. •• In recoenition of twenty~five years of faithful and devoted service as Rector of St. J ames's Parish." Tablet at .. 3." • WINDOWS B. Adams Memorial to Thomas and Jane Russell Adams of Castine, Maine. and their granddaughter,'Ruth Reed Adams. Subject: .. The Good Shepherd." C. Subject to be St. John. D. Subject to be St. Luke.- E. Subject to be St. Mark. F. SubjecFto be St. Matthew. G. Greenleaf Memorial to Mary Longfellow Greenleaf. Subject: .. Holy Anna of the Temple." 138 HISTORY OF ST. JAMES' S PARISH H. Windows above door in· South Transept. A group of five windows. Subjects from the Beatitudes. Rose Window above these; no subject. · I. Two windows. Subject: "' The Treasury." J. Porter Memorial to the Rev. George Washington Porter, D.D. Group of three windows. Subject: •• Go ye, therefore, teach all nations. baptizing ~em in the name of the Father, the Son. and the Holy Ghost-." His name is on the Choir Stall numbered 16, and his cane is just behind it. K. Six windows in the Sanctuary - a part of the Greenleaf Memorial Chancel. Subjects taken from the .. Te Deum." L. Subjects not assigned. Three windows. D. 4, D. 8. Dormer Windows above the Choir - a part of the Memorial Chancel. M. W arland Memorial to the Rev. William W arland. N. North Transept Windows above door. A group of three. Subject: "Faith, Hope, and Charity." 0. Subject not assigned. P. Subject not assigned. Q. Jamieson Memorial to Mrs. Julia Boardman Jamieson. Subject: "Dorcas." R. Subject to be St. Timothy. S. Subject to be St. Paul. T. Subject to be St. Peter. U. Subject to be Samuel. V. Subject to be Hannah. W. Batchelder and Dexter Memorial to Samuel Batchelder and George Dexter, lay founders of the Mission, out of which this Parish grew in 1864. Subject: .. The Seventy." X. Rice Memorial. Tablet adjoining. Subject: "The Light of the Wodd." Y. Rose Window in West Wall. Subject not assigned. Z. Gray Memorial to the Rev. George Zabriskie Gray. Entire group of windows in Lantern above. Tablet at" 8." D. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. Dormer Windows in roof. Subjects not assigned. OTHER MEM0lt.IALS. TABLETS. THANX OFFJ!:ltll!fGS 1. Paddock Memorial to Bishop Benjamin Henry Paddock. Tablet on wall. 2. Rice Memorial Tablet. 3. Edward Abbott Porch Tablet. 4. Memorial Bell Tower with two Tablets on wall. 5. Three pairs of Outside Doors with Inscriptions. Gift of Ladies' Missionary Society. 6. Memorial Tablet to James Quinn. 7. Memorial to William J. Hanna. Gas Lanterns in two Porches. 8. George Zabriskie Gray Tablet. 9. Fountain: Thank Offering for a Great Deliverance. 10. Memorial Font to Gerard Tobey. ll. Paul Revere Bell. Temporarily placed here. 12. Memorial Doors to Rebecca Levering Mattis. 13. Memorial Door to Mrs. Horan. 14. Comer Stone. 15. Mrs. Greenlcars Pew. 16. Rev. George W. Porter's Seat. 139 ..r:c.>. I) I,) ell