Timeline of History at Emmanuel

We’re interested to learn of significant dates and events involving Emmanuelites past and present. Please email archivist@emmanuelboston.org about the details of your Emmanuel timeline. To jump back by decades in this chronology, please select one of these years, and then move up or down by years:

1865 | 1875 | 1885 | 1895 | 1905 | 1915 | 1925 | 1935 | 1945 |

1955 | 1965 | 1975 | 1985 | 1995 | 2005 | 2015 | 2020 | History page.

1907

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Ruth Baylies Schulze (1907-1986) by Alfred Jonniaux

Walter Cabot Baylies (1862-1936)

Walter Cabot Baylies became senior warden.  He purchased the buildings at 11-13 Newbury St. for our Parish House.  His wife Charlotte (Lottie) Upham, daughter of founding member George Upham, gave birth to their daughter Ruth.  They resided at 5 Commonwealth Ave., which now is the Boston Center for Adult Education.

See also:   Jim Cronin, “BCAE Mansion Built for Textile Merchant, The Boston Courant 13(11):1, Dec. 1, 2007.

1906

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Camp Lowell was established by the shores of Lake Annabessacook in Winthrop ME to provide a summer camp for the choir boys of Emmanuel and  Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill.  Boys from our mission Church of the Ascension also attended for two weeks in its first summer.  The camp, which had sleeping accomodations for 28 campers and 2 staff, was named in memory of Charles Lowell, late treasurer of Emmanuel.  Its trusttees were Charles H. Kip, John Lowell, and William Blodgett.  John Collins Bossidy famously toasted, “Boston, the land of the bean and the cod / Where Lowells talk only to Cabots / and Cabots talk only to God,” but it was no doubt belied by the fellowship of Emmanuel, where Walter Cabot Baylies picked up Charles Lowell’s baton and served as warden from 1907-1935.

Our Girls Choir

1905

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Tuberculosis Class, organized by Joseph H. Pratt MD and Lesley H. Spooner, MD., reached 308 patients in its first year.

The Rev. Dr. Samuel McComb (1864–1938) became Associate Rector. Raised in Belfast, Ireland, with a doctorate from Oxford University, he had taught church history at Queens University, Ontario, and served as a Presbyterian minister in England and New York City before his ordination in the Episcopal Church. He became a spokesman for the Emmanuel Movement during its active years.  See also 1909 and his many works available on Amazon and full text from Hathi Trust.


November 23.  Emmanuel Memorial House was dedicated.  Given by Harriet Pitts Weeks (Mrs. Silas Reed) Anthony in memory of her father Andrew Gray Weeks, whose widow gave its playground.  It was located at 11 Newcomb St. around the corner from 1906 Washington St., where our diocese maintained a mission in the South End, Church of the Ascension (now Grant African Methodist Episcopal Church).  Through the Emmanuel House Committee, Emmanuel parishioners helped with the kindergarten and summer play school for neighborhood children.  They also ran homemaking and other classes and a gymnasium for Ascension parishioners. Emmanuel Memorial House567

1904

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  • Leighton Parks was called to St. Bartholomew’s, New York City.

    The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester

  • The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester was called as our fourth rector.  He had received a PhD. from the University of Leipzig, where he studied psychology under Wilhelm Wundt and Gustav Fechner.  Upon his arrival he started the Emmanuel Class for Tuberculosis, which became the basis for what the press named the Emmanuel Movement.
  • Architect Arthur Lawrence Rotch became junior warden.

For more about the Worcester years please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.

For more about the Emmanuel Movement please search our site or see Timeline entries:  1905, 1909 & 1919.

1903

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June 26.  Andrew Gray Weeks died. Having been born in Portland, Maine, in 1823 and confirmed by Dr. F. Dan Huntington, he served on our vestry (1879-82 & 1884) and as junior warden from 1885 until his death.  Having become a successful merchant, Andrew was generous to our church and those less fortunate.  In 1905 his sister Harriet (Mrs. Silas Reed) Anthony gave in his memory the playground for the Emmanuel Memorial House, which his widow Alice gave.  She also paid for a brass memorial plaque for their son Kenneth, who fell at Givenchy, France, in 1915. 

1902

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Vicar Arthur L. Bumpus reported that the Sunday School of our mission Church of the Ascension had on its books 500 children, of whom about 300 attended on a given Sunday. The Rev. Bumpus, who was born 1871 in Quincy MA, son of Judge Everett C. B.,  graduated Harvard College in 1891, and joined the Rev. Edward L. Atkinson at Ascension in 1899.  He eventually became rector of Trinity Church on Long Island NY, where his funeral was held in 1926.

1900

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24 June.  A funeral service was held for our first sexton, James Haynes (30 Dec. 1836–21 June 1900).  Born in Wantage, England (birthplace of Alfred the Great, he would always note), James was a mason, who immigrated to the US in 1859 and found his vocation at our newly constructed church.

1 July.  Walter R. Spaulding, who had been organist & choirmaster since 1898, resigned to pursue duties as instructor at Harvard.  He was succeeded in September by Arthur Sewall Hyde.

1899

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  • The new sanctuary was dedicated.

  • Fay Cottage @ 216 Elm Rd., Falmouth MA was built c1740 by David Butler. 1916 photo thanks to Woods Hole Historical Archive

    A cottage overlooking the Vineyard Sound in Falmouth was provided for a summer-long series of 10-day seaside sojourns for women and children of the Church of the Ascension by Emmanuel parishioners Mr. & Mrs. Henry B. Fay.  A piazza and bathhouses along its beach were constructed with Emmanuel funds.  Sarah M. Gay assisted Clara M. Carter, the Diocesan Deaconess, in managing the retreat at Fay Cottage for the first of 25 years to come.  See also history of Fay Farm.

  • The Students’ House was rented at 21-23 St. James Ave.  It housed about 20 young women and maintained a club for 150 others for more than a decade.
Club Room at Students House, 21-23 St. James Ave.

Club Room at Students House, 21-23 St. James Ave.

 

1898

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  • Henrietta Sargent, daughter of our benefactor Mary Robeson Sargent (1847-1919) and Charles Sprague Sargent, married architect Guy Lowell at Emmanuel.  CSS has a botanical legacy in the Professor Sargent camellia, which was released in 1908.
  • April 19. Francis R. Allen‘s plans were approved and work began on the expansion.

 

 

 

  • Florence R. Rhodes rented a cottage on Sandy Pond in Lincoln MA as a summer camp for girls of Church of the Ascension, which was run by Deaconess Henrietta Goodwin and Helen E. Moulton, intern from the NY Training School for Deaconesses.