2009

PL WerntzOur vestry called The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz to be our twelfth rector.

 

bishopblessing253

 

 

 

 

The Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris blessed our new garden.

 

 

 

Brett Cook and others in Durham NC completed the installation of Face Up:  Telling Stories of Community Life, which includes five murals picturing The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Installed at 117 S. Buchanan Blvd. is “Soul Roots” with an inscription from Proud Shoes:  “It had taken me almost a lifetime to discover that true emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors”.

1944

Pauli Murray Roots & Soul Mural, Durham NC
credit: Brett Cook & Pauli Murray Project

Pauli Murray, first African American woman to attend Howard U. School of Law and later a vestry member of Emmanuel, received her J.D..  For its sesquicentennial Howard is hosting a TEDx conference on 9/15/1917: Singing of a New American”: Pauli Murray’s Legacy and Justice in the 21st Century.

See also:

1929

Upon the planned retirement of The Rev. Elwood Worcester, The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Martin Washburn became rector. For more about the Washburn tenure during the Great Depression, please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.

This image of “The Emmanuelists” honors men associated with the Emmanuel Movement during Worcester’s rectorship: (top row) William James, Richard C. Cabot, Joseph Hersey Pratt, Pierre Janet & (bottow row): Lyman Pierson Powell, Samuel McComb, Elwood Worcester, Isador Coriat, and Courtenay Baylor.

1900

Joseph Hersey Pratt, M.D. (1872-1956)

Dr. Joseph H. Pratt joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and served as secretary of Ascension Chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew.  He reported in the Year Book of Emmanuel Parish that members of its Sailors Committee visited about a dozen vessels per month to distribute literature and invite men to the mission church.  See also his later role in founding the Emmanuel Movement.

1897

October 28. Rector Leighton Parks set up the Emmanuel Club to give young men of the parish a venue for fellowship.  Samuel Taylor was its first secretary.  They met several times a year for dinner with speakers or entertainment at the newly formed University Club at 270 Beacon Street.   Fitz-Henry Smith Jr. was secretary during its last year in 1911.  A member of the Harvard College Class of 1896, he went on to write these works about Boston:

  • The story of Boston light, with some account of the beacons in Boston harbor (1911).
  • The French at Boston during the Revolution : with particular reference to the French fleets and the fortifications in the harbor (1913).
  • Storms and shipwrecks in Boston and the record of the life savers of Hull (1918).

November.  The Rev. Henrietta Rue Goodwin began her service as deaconess at Emmanuel, which included distributing clothing, monitoring the Mothers’ Meeting, helping to fund choir vestments, and overseeing a Bible class and the Students’ Club.  Her reports in our Yearbooks (1897-1906), give her accounting of Special Funds for distribution of aid to the poor and her other activities, which included thousands of visits to the sick and needy.

Children of Anne & Benjamin Rotch (clockwise): Aimee, Edith, Arthur & Lawrence

Work of Emmanuel House in the South End was transferred to our mission there, Church of the Ascension.

Edith Rotch, the younger daughter of Anne Bigelow Lawrence & Benjamin S. Rotch died at the age of fifty.  She was memorialized by her sister Aimee R. Sargent in our Rotch reredos.

1896

  • Leighton Parks rejected a call from a Brooklyn parish.  The Vestry quickly began work on a larger church, which would add forty pews.
  • The Ascension Chapter (#1407) of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew was organized by the Rev. Edward Atkinson.
  • Harriet Dexter Lawrence Hemenway, 1890, by John Singer Sargent. Credit: WikiCommons

    Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and her cousin Minna B. Hall founded the Mass. Audubon Society.  For some time they had fought against the slaughter of egrets and other birds for their plumes by organizing women to stop wearing feathered hats.