The Business & Professional Women’s Guild (formerly Club) had 98 members. Its officers were Miss Lydia LeBaron Walker, President; Miss Caroline G. Whitney, Vice-President and Recording Secretary; Miss Margaret A. Cooke, Corresponding Secretary; Maude D. Gowen; Treasurer. Our archives has its membership directory for that church year. The Guild was active for another decade.
Timeline of History at Emmanuel
1957
6 Oct. The Rt. Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes III, our 11th diocesan bishop, installed The Rev. Harold Bend Sedgwick as our eighth rector.
The rectory at 10 Chestnut St. was sold and an apartment at 388 Beacon St. was bought for his residence. For more about the Sedgwick years please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.
1956
- Feb 15. “Ole Miss” invited the Rev. Alvin Louis Kershaw to speak
on the subject of jazz, an area in which he was considered something of an expert. In the meantime, [he had become] a contestant on the television quiz show The $64,000 Question, where his expertise in the field of jazz helped him to win $32,000. In an interview after the program, he alluded to the possibility of donating a portion of his winnings to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to aid in the battle against segregation. When word of this reached Mississippi, the Rev. Kershaw became the target of a firestorm of criticism, which eventually led to cancellation of his scheduled visit to Ole Miss.
–Guide to his papers donated by his widow Doris to U. of Southern Mississippi, McCain Library and Archives.
- His album Introduction to Jazz was released by Decca Records. Our archive has a copy of the record, which contains “Selected recordings of great jazz stylists, with historical data and musical analyses” and these tunes:
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- Snag it (King Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators)
- Wild man blues (Johnny Dodds’ Black Bottom Stompers)
- I’ve found a new baby (Chicago Rhythm Kings)
- Tin roof blues (New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
- Davenport blues (Adrian Rollini’s Orchestra)
- The blues jumped a rabbit (Jimmy Noone’s New Orleans Band)
- Five point blues (Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats)
- Perdido Street blues (Louis Armstrong)
- Georgia cake walk (Art Hodes and his band)
- Impromptu ensemble no. 1 (Bobby Hackett et al.)
- Tishomingo blues (Bunk Johnson)
- Chimes blues (George Lewis and his Ragtime Band).
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See also Timeline entries: 1963, 1966, 1969.
- March. Rector R.G. Metters in his annual report summarized the decade of his tenure, including:
- Growth in communicants
- Growth of investments by more than a quarter
- Increase in pledges from $22K to almost $43K
- Renovation of the church and parish house at a cost of more than $115K
- Oct. 1. Rector Metters resigned and later became headmaster of St. George’s School in Spokane WA. The vestry appointed the Rev. David Siegenthaler priest-in-charge.
1955
1 July. The Rev. David Siegenthaler arrived to serve as curate under Rector R. G. Metters, then served for a year as priest in charge the next year, when Metters retired.
Renovations of the Parish House and Sanctuary, which had cost more that $115,000, were completed.
See also Timeline post: 2021
1952
The General Convention of The Episcopal Church was held in Boston. Thanks to Roger Lovejoy at our diocesan headquarters for this image of some of the attending bishops in our parish hall.
Front row, left to right: Wallace Conkling, 7th Bishop of Chicago; Benjamin Ivins, VII of Milwaukee; Charles Boynton, III of Puerto Rico; Spence Burton, SSJE, IX of Nassau, Bahamas; James DeWolfe, IV of Long Island; Donald Campbell, Suffragan of Los Angeles; and Reginald Mallett, III of Northern Indiana.
Back row Henry Daniels, V of Montana; Donald Hallock, VIII of Milwaukee; Jonathan Sherman, V of Long Island; Edward Demby, Suffragan Bishop of Arkansas.
Bishops of The Episcopal Church gathered in our Parish Hall. Photo credit: Diocese of MA
1951
Pauli Murray, whom Emmanuel would eventually sponsor for the priesthood, compiled and edited a seminal work for the civil rights cases: States‘ laws on race and color: and appendices containing international documents, federal laws and regulations, local ordinances and charts (Cincinnati: Women’s Division of Christian Service, Board of Missions and Church Extension, Methodist Church, 1951). Her fight for civil rights had begun in 1938, when the NAACP unsuccessfully sponsored her for admission to the University of NC. In 1940 she was arrested in Virginia for refusing to sit in back of a bus. For a timeline of her struggles and achievements, see Duke Human Rights Center’s Pauli Murray Project.
See also our guide to her legacy and Timeline entries about her: 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.
1950
A rectory at 10 Chestnut St. on Beacon Hill was bought for the Metters family.
1949
- 13 October. After its Planning Committee led by Misses E. Louis Seymour and Elsie L. Jones had laid the groundwork, the Business & Professional Women’s Club held its first meeting. Alberta Pond and Adele Herrick became its first president and secretary, respectively. They held monthly suppers after which members worked on projects or enjoyed entertainment.
1948
The Rev. Robert Gifford Metters
In connection with its stewardship campaign the vestry ran a survey that revealed a reduced congregation of 375 communicants. With his associate priest, the Rev. Dr. H. Robert Smith, Rector R.G. Metters began holding Healing Services on Wednesday mornings. He was president of the Mass. Association for Mental Health for several years and a longtime member of the National Association.
1947
Redington Mudge DeCormis (1884-1967), son of the Rev. Dr. Louis De Cormis (1846-1916), became Jr. Warden and then served as Sr. Warden from 1948-53, during the tenure of Rector Metters. His father, the Rev. Dr. Louis De Cormis, was priest of St. Stephens, Lynn, when he named his son after Enoch Redington Mudge, patron of the beautiful church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1881. E.R. Mudge had served as our Jr. Warden from 1865-72. Having been vice president of the Second National Bank since 1923, R.M. De Cormis retired in 1955, when it merged with State Street Bank and Trust. Correspondence of his second wife, Charlotte (Lotten) Augusta Lenander, a Swedish physician whom he had married in 1944, have been archived.