2007

Nov. 14.  Craig Smith, our music director and founder of Emmanuel Music, died.  Richard Dyer wrote an obituary for Emmanuel Music.

Piano collector Hu Youyi purchased our Casavant organ and shipped it to the Organ Art Center on Gulangyu Island, Fujian Province, China, where it was restored by Rieger Orgelbau and installed in a concert hall (above) in 2017. See also the record for Opus 700 in the Pipe Organ Database.

 

 

 

1989

  • April 8.  Emmanuel Music gave a concert in honor of Principal Guest Conductor John Harbison’s 50th birthday (20 Dec. 1988).  His wife Rose Mary Pederson Harbison opened with a violin concerto she had played at its 1980 premiere.
  • Katharine Ward Lane Weems died and bequeathed a pair of Spanish candelabra now standing in the  baptistery of our Sanctuary.  Born 22 Feb.1899, she was the only child of  Emma Gildersleeve and Gardiner Martin Lane, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death in 1914. They lived at 53 Marlborough Street and were members of Emmanuel.

Katharine attended the Museum School from 1915 and began to show her work in 1920.  She designed the brick friezes and bronze doors of Harvard’s Biological Laboratories with two massive bronze rhinoceri (one pictured below) installed in the courtyard in 1937.

See also

Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston

1909

  • Thanks to the late Craig Smith for this image of Priscilla as a girl, c1915.

    7 May.  Benefactor of our cantata program, Priscilla Rawson (Young) was born in Bayside, NYC to Clementine Herschel of Holyoke MA & Hobart Rawson of Cincinnati OH. She was named for her Mayflower ancestor Priscilla Mullins Alden, who in turn was the namesake of Priscilla, now thought to have been the amanuensis of Paul the Apostle and author of the Epistle to the Hebrews [1].  See also 1939, 1942, 1971, 1973, 1994 & 2000.

  • Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb published The Christian Religion as a Healing Power: A Defense and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement (NY: Moffat, Yard), full text.  It is an addendum to their Religion and Medicine:  The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders (NY: Moffat, Yard, 1908), full text.
  • Parishioner Ernest Jacoby started a group for alcoholic men with special emphasis on fellowship as a path to recovery.  It eventually moved from our basement and continued into the 1930s as the Jacoby Club.  The first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston was held in 1940 at the Club, then at 115 Newbury Street.
  • Entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

    The first section of parishioner Guy Lowell‘s design for the Museum of Fine Arts was completed. Lowell (1870-1927) also designed the Charles River Dam (built in 1910) and the Esplanade from the Charlesgate to the dam.  For more about him and his other architectural achievements, please see Wikipedia.

 


 

 

1. Ruth Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Ft. Bragg CA: Lost Coast Press, 2000.

1864

Isabella Gardner

Mrs. Gardner by John Singer Sargent, courtesy of the Gardner Museum via WikiCommons

April 10.  Isabella Stewart Gardner was confirmed at Emmanuel by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Manton Eastburn, Bishop of Massachusetts.  It was the fourth anniversary of her marriage to John Lowell (Jack) Gardner, Jr., who had purchased Pew 28  in 1862.  Although the Stewarts had been members of Grace Church in New York City, their children were not confirmed until they reached adulthood. Louise Hall Tharp in her biography Mrs. Jack hypothesizes that Isabella’s confirmation “might have been a sort of thank-offering for the child she so much wanted”.  John Lowell 3rd, born on June 18, 1863, unfortunately died on March 15, 1865. His baptism and burial are recorded in our parish register. The Gardners, who lived nearby at 152 Beacon St., later raised their orphaned nephews, sons of Jack’s brother Joseph, also owned a pew until his death in 1875.

Take a visual tour of her museum and its collection at Google’s Cultural Institute.