Selecting the Site of St. Paul's

Originally published July 9, 2020.

In this four page document we see the founders’ thought process as they selected a site for St Paul’s in the growing town of Boston. To give you an idea of what Boston was like in 1819 take a look at the map from 1814. The corridor of what is now Washington St (noted by the orange line on the map.) This road would have led a resident to the extreme end of the town, and it was often referred to as Boston Neck. This narrow “neck” would have then led to the town of Roxbury. In between those two towns was a wetland, now the neighborhoods of the Bay Village, the Back Bay, and The Fenway. These neighborhoods do not yet exist in 1819. The Committee decided to buy a few lots across from the Common that already have buildings and “clear the site of its encumbrances” in order to construct St Paul’s Church. The location of Old North, Trinity Church, and King's Chapel have been marked to give you an idea of how these churches were spaced apart from each other.

Sources from the Cathedral archives.

The Rev. Samuel Jarvis Comes to Boston

Originally published on July 2, 2020.

The Reverend Doctor Samuel Farmar Jarvis is celebrated as “the first historiographer of the Episcopal Church,” a position to which he was named at the General Convention in 1838. He is best known to us, however, as the first Rector of St. Paul’s Church in Boston. Prior to his installation as pastor of the new church on July 7, 1820, the Rev. Jarvis was already well known to many of the church’s first subscribers. His nature as a prolific recorder of events, along with his keen attention to his reputation and legacy, left us with many clues in the church’s and other institutional archives about the early years of St. Paul’s and his tenure as Rector.

The Rev. Jarvis was born in January 1786 in Middletown, Connecticut, son of that state’s second American Episcopal Bishop Abraham Jarvis. Educated at Yale, Samuel Jarvis was ordained into the priesthood in 1811 at the age of 25. He served at St. Michael’s Church in Bloomingdale, New York, and then as Rector of St. James’ Church in New York City. It was while he was Rector at St. James’ that the Rev. Jarvis came to the attention of some of the influential proprietors of Trinity Church in Boston.

Dudley Atkins Tyng, Reporter of Decisions for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Boston and enthusiastic member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, corresponded frequently with the Rev. Jarvis about their shared passions. Tyng and others at Trinity Church, then located at the corner of Summer Street and Bishop’s Way (later Hawley Street) in the South End and one of only two Episcopal (formerly Anglican) churches in Boston, sought over the summer of 1818 to force the Reverend Dr. John Gardiner, Trinity’s Rector, to take on an Associate Rector. They went so far as to fund the new position through the foundation of one of the proprietors and secure a favorable vote of the majority of Trinity’s proprietors, all over the objection of the Rev. Gardiner. Even the Rev. Asa Eaton, Rector of Christ Church in the North End (Old North Church) wrote to the Rev. Jarvis pleading with him to accept the position, while also warning him of the perilous position of the Episcopal Church in New England at that time. The Rev. Jarvis found himself en route to Boston only to be stifled by a message from Gardiner stating he did not support his hiring and dissuading him from continuing.

Tyng, later to become the first Warden of St. Paul’s, and his coconspirators did not give up. The next plan, Tyng explained in a letter to the Rev. Jarvis, was to build a new church “in the nature of a chapel of ease to Trinity Church, the pewholders of which should increase the salary of the assistant minister to a competent support, and in which the rector and assistant should officiate alternately.” Tyng’s hope was to establish the chapel and then make it an independent church once it was filled. There was not enough support among a majority of Trinity proprietors, however, to build a new church. Thereafter, the plan to build a new independent Episcopal Church in Boston, calling the Rev. Jarvis as its Rector, proceeded.

While the new church’s supporters were soliciting subscribers from among disaffected members of other Episcopal churches and the city’s Congregational churches in 1819, the Rev. Jarvis was offered a position as the professor of Biblical Learning at the newly established General Theological Seminary in New York. He informed Tyng of his decision to accept the professorship in order to help the new seminary get started, but with every intention of giving suitable notice of his departure to Boston should the new church be built. When St. Paul’s was built, and the Rev. Jarvis was invited to be its Rector, his departure from the seminary caused a permanent and public rift with the Bishop of New York, John Henry Hobart.

While serving at the seminary, the Rev. Jarvis stayed in constant contact with the subscribers of St. Paul’s and the chairman of the church’s building committee, George Sullivan, offering opinions on its location, construction and subscriptions. Most of Jarvis’ ideas were rejected or ignored, but he was finally received in Boston near the end of June 1820 and installed as Rector shortly afterwards.

In his narrative about his time at St. Paul’s published after his departure in 1826, the Rev. Jarvis lamented, “I was induced to believe that a greater field of usefulness was opened to me in Boston, than in the parishes where I had been for nine years happily settled, or in the Theological Seminary then in its infancy…on my arrival in Boston, I found myself disappointed in almost every particular.”

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” Psalm 24 (KJV)

Compiled with the assistance of Myra Anderson, Vice Chair of the Cathedral Chapter.

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The Consecration of St. Paul’s Church

Originally published June 25, 2020.

The Consecration of St. Paul’s Church in Boston, Friday, June 30, 1820 This coming Tuesday, June 30th, will mark the two-hundred year anniversary of the consecration and opening of St. Paul’s. On the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul on June 29th, that is to say, one of two feast days honoring St. Paul. But how did the founders of St. Paul’s get to that day in June of 1820?

Dudley Atkins Tyng

Dudley Atkins Tyng, Esq., was one of the strongest early advocates for the formation of a new Episcopal church in Boston in the early 1800’s. Our archives contain several years of correspondence between Tyng and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Farmar Jarvis. Both men were prolific letter writers, giving many clues about the earliest origins of St. Paul’s Church in Boston. Tyng served as the first warden of the new church and Jarvis was then a young Episcopal priest serving at a church in New York City.

Tyng became a proprietor, the Boston term for member or parishioner, of Trinity Church in Boston, located then at the corner of Summer Street and Bishop’s Way (later Hawley Street) in the South End (what we now call Downtown Crossing).

Tyng and Jarvis began to correspond in the fall of 1818. Jarvis was from Connecticut, son of the second Episcopal bishop of Connecticut Abraham Jarvis. Tyng reported to Jarvis that a group of the proprietors of Trinity were unhappy with Rector John Gardiner’s level of attention to pastoral care and desired to force Dr. Gardiner to accept an assistant. A copy of the offer letter to Jarvis from the trustees of the Greene Foundation (Benjamin Greene and Enoch Hale) offering the position of Trinity Assistant Minister at a somewhat reduced salary than previously discussed is in the archives. The matter got as far as Jarvis being en route to Boston. Jarvis wrote afterwards to Tyng, only to be stifled by a message from Gardiner stating he did not support his hiring and dissuading him from continuing.

A New Church

By late 1818, Tyng and several other prominent men from an array of Boston churches joined forces to form a new Episcopal church, independent of Trinity Church. Tyng continued corresponding with Jarvis to interest him in serving as rector of the new church, keeping Jarvis apprised of their progress. His earliest co-conspirators were Benjamin Greene and Stephen Codman from Trinity Church, and John and George Odin and Subel Bell of Old North. Jarvis was interested in making his mark, particularly in Boston where there was considerable animosity towards the Episcopal Church following two wars fought against the British and a burgeoning Unitarian movement among Congregationalists, the established state church. Jarvis accepted an appointment to the new (General) Theological Seminary in New York in the spring of 1819 while “reserving to myself the right of retiring from the situation, when I may think it expedient, by giving six months’ notice of my intention…if then a new church be built in Boston, I shall be left perfectly open to enter into future negotiations with the vestry.”

By April, 1819, enough men had subscribed to the new church go forward with its incorporation and to begin the search for a location. Tyng relayed the good news to his friend Jarvis, reporting that a committee of nine had been authorized to move forward: Messrs. Odin and Bell from Old North; George Sullivan and Daniel Webster from Brattle Square Unitarian Church (formerly Brattle Street Church, a Congregational Church that had embraced the growing movement toward Unitarianism and was located in the now City Hall Plaza area of Boston); William Appleton, John Armory (Appleton’s father-in-law), Henry Codman (son of Stephen described as “heartsick at Trinity”, became warden of St. Paul’s in 1821 after Tyng returned to his ancestral home in Newburyport due to illness, and William Shimmin from Trinity Church; and Francis Wilby, described only as “of a Baptist congregation.” The committee adopted St. Paul’s as the name of the new church.

The location of the new church was the next step. Jarvis had expressed a preference for the well-established South End, but the new subscribers preferred the West End where there were fewer churches but many residences. Tyng warned Jarvis that not all of the subscribers had committed to purchasing pews, but seemed confident that there were others who would join the church once pews were offered. The group subsequently purchased a lot on Common St (now Tremont St). On March 12, 1820 the formal offer to Jarvis was made from Tyng and George Sullivan on behalf of the proprietors to serve at St. Paul’s. Jarvis accepted the offer on March 17 and the wheels were in motion. More to come on The Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis as we continue this series!

In subsequent letters, Tyng kept Jarvis apprised of the progress of the location and building. The first stone was laid on July 2, 1819. The cornerstone was laid in September, the roof completed at Christmas and then slated. By the first of May the plastering was completed. The pews and pulpit were installed and the finishing touches were in place ahead of the anticipated July completion date. On June 30th, The Rt. Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, received by the proprietors of the church at the west door, along with The Rev. Samuel Jarvis and other local clergy. They proceeded to the communion table and started the consecration service with the twenty-forth Psalm. It would be another 92 years before St. Paul’s Church would be elevated as the Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” Psalm 24 (KJV)

Compiled with the assistance of Myra Anderson, Vice Chair of the Cathedral Chapter.

Photos saved on Flickr.com.

The Founding of St. Paul's

Originally published on June 18, 2020 with addendum from November 10, 2021.

In 1818 a group of individuals, many of whom were not Episcopalians, decided that they wanted to establish a wholly American Episcopal parish. The first Anglican parish in Boston (King’s Chapel) had already been swept up by the Unitarian movement leaving Christ Church (Old North) and Trinity as the remaining two parishes from the pre-Revolutionary days. The founders purchased a lot on Common Street, now Tremont Street in a neighborhood that was growing.

In 1819 the founders commissioned Alexander Parris and Solomon Willard to construct a Greek Temple to contrast with the existing colonial and “gothick” structures of the city. The body of St Paul’s church would be constructed out of Quincy granite. The Ionic columns on the portico of what we now call “the porch” were quarried out of sandstone from the Acquia Creek area in Stafford County, Virginia (more to come about that story in our report on Reparations and Slavery). The interior is somewhat different from what we now have. Originally, the altar stood in a shallow apse beneath a coved vault supported by free-standing, fluted Ionic Pillars. The pews are now gone, the chancel has been extended, and our generation makes its mark on what is now The Cathedral Church of St Paul. As we investigate our past we will offer a new and more accurate history, different from what has been told in the past. Stay tuned!

Note: the History Committee is conducting ongoing research into the potential involvement of two founding members, William Appleton and David Sears, in the slave economy. You can read more about this history in our report on Reparations and Slavery.

Extracts from: Cathedral Church of St. Paul. (1987). An Anniversary History. Boston, Massachusetts, Edited by Mark J. Duffy.

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