May 12. The poet Amy Lawrence Lowell died young of a cerebral hemorrhage. She had been born in 1874 to our parishioners Katherine Bigelow Lawrence (1832-95) and Augustus Lowell (1830-1900). Many members of the Lawrence and Lowell families attended Emmanuel. Her partner Ada Dwyer Russell was the subject of many of her romantic poems. A volume of her complete works was published in 1955. She is buried in the Lowell plot (#3401) on Bellwort Path in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Albert Williams Snow replaced Lynnwood Farnum as organist.
January 20. The Anthony Memorial Organ in the West Gallery was dedicated, honoring Silas Reed Anthony (1863-1914), who served as Parish Clerk (1887-1898), Vestryman (1898-1906), and Junior Warden (1906-1914). The organ was a gift of his widow, Harriet Weeks. who later became Mrs. Randolph Frothingham.
March 22. Bishop William Lawrence and Rector Elwood Worcester officiated at the funeral of Andrew Robeson Sargent, who at the age of 42 died in his sleep. After graduating from Harvard College in 1900, he had followed in his father Charles Sprague Sargent‘s footsteps and worked as a landscape architect with his brother-in-law Guy Lowell. His wife Maria de Acosta Sargent, daughter of the writer Mercedes de Acosta, had been painted by his third cousin John Singer Sargent. His mother Mary Robeson Sargent and sisters Henrietta, Molly, and Alice Sargent gave in his memory our hymn boards and the carved doors to leading from our sanctuary to the “Bride’s Lobby”.
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August 26. Col. Cranmore Nesmith Wallace, who had served on our vestry from 1896 until his death, died at the age of 74. His widow Eunice Sprague Wallace gave 2 lancets in our sanctuary (#18: Adoration of the Magi) in his memory
November 2. The Churchman (p. 518) reported that the Emmanuel Memorial House was serving as an emergency shelter for children made homeless by the influenza epidemic. Nurses and workers from the Children’s Aid Society and the (Episcopal) Church Home Society were supervising children housed in its “clubrooms” until they could be placed with families by “the usual placing-out services”.
Aimee Rotch Sargent (born 1852) died. She had married at Emmanuel in 1874 Winthrop Henry Sargent (1840-1916). In 1893 she had given funds to create our sanctuary’s reredos in memory of her parents Annie & Benjamin S. Rotch and her siblings Arthur and Edith Rotch.
The Students’ House Corporation, under the direction of Mary S. Holmes and Charlotte Upham Baylies, built at 96 The Fenway a home for our Students’ House, which had been in rented quarters since its inception in 1899. They engaged architects Kilham & Hopkins, raised a large portion of its construction cost ($124K), and secured a mortgage for the remainder. The building is now Kerr Hall, a Northeastern University dormitory.
Gardiner Martin Lane from Harvard College Class of 1881 biography of him in the papers of Katharine Lane Weems at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe.
October 6. About a thousand people attended the funeral service for financier, philanthropist, and parishioner Gardiner Martin Lane (born 1859). The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester, The Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, The Rev. John W. Suter of Winchester, and The Rev. Prescott Evarts from Lane’s Harvard Class of 1881 officiated. Pallbearers included President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Francis Adams, and several of his partners from Lee Higginson & Co.. Lynnwood Farnum played a Tchaikovsky funeral march and “Dead March” from Handel’s “Saul”. The boys choir sang “Abide with me” and “The strife is over”.
As treasurer of the New England chapter of the International Red Cross, Lane collected and distributed relief funds for the Salem fire (1914), the San Francisco earthquake (1906), and other disasters. Appointed trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1906, and elected its president in 1907, he oversaw its move from Copley Square to the Evans Building on Huntington Ave., which was designed by Emmanuelite Guy Lowell. Spearheading the Museum’s fundraising effort for the new facility, Lane said, “A mere collection of beautiful objects is of little value unless seen, appreciated, and understood by many.”
His widow, Emma Louise Gildersleeve Lane, and daughter, Katharine Lane Weems, were parishioners for years after his death and generous benefactors to Emmanuel. Emma was the daughter of philologist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, who was a colleague of Gardiner Martin’s father George Martin Lane, a classics professor at Harvard.
See also our pages World War I Memorial and Katharine Lane Weems.
The Lanes’ home at 53 Marlborough is now the French Cultural Center.
The Lanes’ summer house, The Chimneys, in Manchester by the Sea, MA was designed by Emma G. Lane’s brother Raleigh C. Gildersleeve.
July. Choirmaster Weston Spies Gales, young William Appleton Lawrence (1889-1968), and a cook, Mr. Wood, took thirty choirboys to Camp Lowell in Winthrop, Maine, for a fortnight of fellowship.
20 Nov. Anna Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore MD. Pauli (as she became known) was to become a famous civil-rights lawyer, a member of our vestry, our postulant for Holy Orders, and a saint of The Episcopal Church. For details of her many accomplishments, please see our guide to resources about her.Our Building Committee reported expending $16K to expand the seating capacity of the Church of the Ascension (our mission in the South End) to hold more that 565. Vestry member Cranmore N. Wallace (1834-1918) reported on cost overrides for the project in the Year Book of Emmanuel Church.
Senior Warden Edward Sprague Rand, Jr. has an orchid named for him by French
Paphinia cristata var. Randi named for ES Rand, Jr. by Lucien Linden (1851-1940) & Émile Rodigas (1831-1902) in 1885
colleagues Lucien Linden (1851-1940) and Émile Rodigas (1831-1902).
Edward Sprague Rand (1809-84, senior warden 1860-64)
Jan 18. SS City of Columbus was wrecked on Devil’s Bridge off Martha’s Vineyard. A group of Wampanoags heroically managed to rescue several men. All women and children had perished when an icy wave swept them overboard.
Among the 65 passengers drowned were parishioner Oscar Iasigi, who was the Turkish consul for New England. and our founding senior warden Edward Sprague Rand, who was on his way to Florida with his wife, daughter-in-law, grandson, and son, The Rev. C. A. Rand, rector of Trinity Church, Haverhill. All were lost.
The Rev. Mary Douglass Burnham, 1899, by permission of SUNY Upstate Medical University
Having learned of a recent massacre of Sioux Indians from her friend Evelina Bogart of Albany NY, parishioner Mary Douglass Saville (Mrs. Wesley) Burnham (1832-1904) founded the Dakota League, a mission of our diocese (and eventually other Boston-area churches) to support Native Americans in the Dakota Territory.
Isabella Stewart 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.