hebacco C The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society HARBORING RELIGION: MISSIONARIES, CONVERTS, AND SOJOURNERS Volume XX 2019 MOUNT DESERT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY Executive Director Timothy F. Garrity Board of Directors William Horner, M.D., President Raney Bench, Vice President Rick Wheeler, Secretary P. Hamilton Clark, Treasurer Ralph Stanley, President Emeritus Marion Stanley, Honorary Member Timothy Bannon Dru Colbert Susan Edson Elise Frank Julia Gray Kathryn MacLeod Tova Mellen Nicole Ouellette Diana Paine Michael Pancoe Benjamin Pierce Genie Thorndike Anne Walmsley John Wilson Jonathan Winthrop Administrative Coordinator Leah Lucey Eliot Fellow Eloise Schultz Visiting History Scholars Brittany Goetting Darcy Stevens Cover: "Pine Boughs," 1969, Gabriel Loire, France. St. Saviour's Episcopal Church, Bar Harbor. Chebacco The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society Volume X X HARBORING RELIGION: MISSIONARIES, CONVERTS, AND SOJOURNERS 2019 Mount Desert, Maine Chebacco Editorial Team Guest Editors Copy Editor R. Marie Griffith Eloise Schultz Leigh Eric Schmidt Proof Reader Editor Lynne Birlem Tim Garrity Production Manager Artist in Residence Leah Lucey Jennifer Steen Booher Designer Rebecca Hope Woods © 2019 by Mount Desert Island Historical Society All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part, in any form, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a review. Please address all inquiries to: Mount Desert Island Historical Society PO Box 653 Mount Desert, ME 04660 [email protected] www.mdihistory.org Printed in Newcastle, ME by Lincoln County Publishing Co. Inc. This publication is made possible by the generous support of Peter and Sofia Blanchard George and Nancy Putnam Members of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society and The participating organizations of the History Trust, who are working to create a collective digital archive and hand down the region's historical collections intact, cataloged, digitized, and fully accessible to future generations. The History Trust participants are the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association, College of the Atlantic, Great Harbor Maritime Museum, Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, Islesford Historical Society, Jesup Memorial Library, Maine Seacoast Mission, Mount Desert Island Historical Society, Seal Cove Auto Museum, Southwest Harbor Historical Society, and Tremont Historical Society We would also like to acknowledge the Southwest Harbor Public Library Digital Archive and the assistance of Charlotte Morrill and George Soules in obtaining many of the historical photographs that illustrate this issue. Detail of south wall window, ca. 1916, artist unknown. St. Edward's Convent, Bar Harbor (currently the Bar Harbor Historical Society) Contents 7 Introduction 77 Elegy at Baker Island: R. Marie Griffith and Leigh Eric Schmidt Charles W. Eliot's Maritime Pastoral David A. Hollinger 17 Stained Glass Windows of Mount Desert Island 87 George Hefflon's Silent Mission Jennifer Steen Booher Tim Garrity 21 Collisions of Faith on New England's 97 From Harvard's Semitic Museum "Pagan Skirts": Protestants, Catholics, to Mount Desert Island and Back and Religious Encounter in Early Maine Mikeal C. Parsons Laura M. Chmielewski 109 The Jewish Presence, 35 "Ter-Centenary": Inventing Tradition or Absence Thereof … for Maine's Catholics, 1913 Judith S. Goldstein James M. O'Toole 121 The Episcopal Church 45 Congregationalists on Mount Comes to Gott's Island Desert Island, Maine Craig D. Townsend Margaret Bendroth 131 Acadia National Park: 55 "He Has Abundantly Poured out His Holy A Soul and Spirit Stretching Place Spirit in Eden and Mount Desert": The Baptist Connection on Thomas S. Bremer Mount Desert Island, 1790–1840 143 "Moment After Moment Brittany Goetting After Moment": Cultivating a Zen Presence on Mount Desert Island 67 The William Foy Story Brook Wilensky-Lanford Mark Silk 5 The William Foy Story By Mark Silk Around 1867, according to George consumed with the prophecies of William Miller, E. Street's 1905 history of Mount Desert, a farmer and lay Baptist preacher who predicted "a colored evangelist, Rev. William E. that Christ's return was imminent. The date was Foy, organized at Otter Creek a church initially set for some time between March 21, of twenty-five members to be known 1843 and March 21, 1844, and then, after a series as a 'Christian Church.'"1 That is the of recalculations, fixed on October 22, 1844. extent of what Street, a Congregational Like a number of other antebellum Protestant minister, has to say about perhaps the groups, the Millerites condemned sectarian most consequential figure in American divisions in the name of restoring the Primitive religious history ever to reside in Hancock Church. The movement drew from many County. But we should not be surprised. denominations, and there was no shortage of Foy had made his mark more than two opposition among the denominational clergy. decades before he appeared in Otter Foy was not initially a believer. But on January Creek, and his historical significance is 18 and February 4, 1842, he collapsed during even today recognized by very few. church services, lying inert for two and a half William Ellis Foy was a native Mainer, hours the first time and subsequently for twelve born in the small town of Belgrade just and a half hours. Both times, when he came to, north of Augusta in 1818.2 In 1835, he he was able to relate detailed visions of the arrival experienced a religious conversion under of the saved in heaven. These visions persuaded the preaching of Silas Curtis, a Freewill him of the doctrine of Jesus' "near approach," Baptist minister. Freewill Baptists and turned him into a celebrity preacher.3 rejected the Calvinist view that people In city after New England city, he appeared are predestined to be saved or damned, before thousands in the garb of an Episcopal priest, believing instead that all are capable recounting his visions and preaching the Millerite of availing themselves of God's grace. gospel with eloquence and erudition. Critics did In Maine, they were strongly opposed not scruple to employ racist language against him. to slavery, and Curtis was among their "When will wonders cease?" asked the Portland leading advocates of emancipation. Tribune in a story on February 10, 1844. "The By 1840, Foy was living in Boston Millerites of this city have recently imported a great with his wife Ann and their young bull nigger, who has been rolling up the white of daughter Amelia, having apparently his eyes, showing his ivory, and astonishing the decided to advance his education by good people by his dreams and prognostications."4 studying for the Episcopal priesthood. Foy had moved to Portland after receiving his At the time, many New Englanders were visions, and among his eager auditors was a teenager 67 named Ellen Hammond, whose father century American Protestants sought. In took her to hear him in Beethoven Hall on places, her descriptions of what she experienced Congress Street and on Cape Elizabeth. closely track what Foy described.7 In due course, the young woman claimed to have her own visions, and was invited Foy: White: to speak about them. As she recalled "The angel raised his "Jesus raised His many years later, "While I was talking right hand, and laid mighty, glorious I heard a shout, and he is a great, tall hold upon the gate, arm, laid hold of man, and the roof was rather low, and and opened it; and the pearly gate, he jumped right up and down, and oh, as it rolled upon its swung it back on he praised the Lord, praised the Lord. glittering hinges, he its glittering hinges, It was just what he had seen, just what cried with a loud voice, and said to us, 'You he had seen." Afterwards, the two spoke to the heavenly host, have washed your with each other. "But they extolled him 'You're all welcome.'" robes in My blood, so I think it hurt him, and I do not know "I then saw in the stood stiffly for My what became of him," she said. "He was a midst of the place an truth, enter in.'" very tall man, slightly colored. But it was innumerable multitude, "Here on the sea remarkable testimonies that he bore."5 arrayed in white of glass the 144,000 Hammond's encounter with Foy raiment, standing in a stood in a perfect took place in 1845, when the faithful perfect square, having, square. Some of that remained after Christ failed to crowns of unfading them had very bright return — "The Great Disappointment," glory upon their heads." crowns, others as they called it — were seeking a way not so bright." forward. In January, Foy had arranged Adventists have regarded these and other with two Millerite brothers who ran a textual parallels as evidence that Foy was a bona Portland printing house to bring out an fide forerunner of White, a prophetic "herald autobiographical pamphlet titled The and mouthpiece" of the earliest members of their Christian Experience of William E. Foy. community.8 To an outsider's eyes, however, it "My object in publishing these visions," looks as though White took Foy's words and gave he wrote, "is to comfort the saints."6 them a conventional Christian spin, for example The leader of the saintly remnant would by substituting Jesus for his angel and by replacing in due course be none other than Ellen "innumerable" with 144,000 — the number of Hammond, who in 1846 married a the saved specified in the Book of Revelation. Millerite preacher named James White Unlike Foy, White was not very literate, and and, as Ellen White, went on to establish when she began to publish her visions in 1846, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. her better educated husband edited them for White owed her prominence to publication.