Our second rector, The Rev. Dr. A.H. Vinton, presided at the funeral of Benjamin Tyler Reed, a founder and early vestryman, who had served as warden from 1863-72. Pallbearers included John Cummings; founding vestryman and early warden Enoch Redington Mudge; our first senior warden, Edward Sprague Rand; Henry Winthrop Sargent; and Amos Adams Lawrence. Among the many in attendance were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josiah Quincy, and Robert Charles Winthrop. According to the April 3 Boston Evening Transcript, the cortege to Mount Auburn Cemetery comprised some twenty coaches.
Timeline of History at Emmanuel
1873
Several famous botanists were connected with our church.
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Rhododendron “Edward S. Rand”. Photo credit: Tijs Huisman
When Benjamin Tyler Reed retired as senior warden, Edward Sprague Rand served again as warden until 1875. His son E.S. Rand, Jr. (actually III) wrote many botanical works. An orchid and a rhododendron are named for him (or perhaps his father).
- Henry Winthrop Sargent (1810-1882) became junior warden. In 1859 and 1875, he published supplements to Downing’s reference work, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841).
- Dec. 2. Winthrop Henry Sargent (1840-1916, son of H.W. & Caroline Olmsted S.) married Aimee Rotch, daughter of Emmanuel charter members Benjamin S. and Annie Bigelow Rotch. They lived at 207 Commonwealth Avenue. Winthrop served for 30 years as warden of St. Luke’s Chapel, Fishkill-on-Hudson, NY, where the Sargents summered. See also:
- Rotch Reredos
- Henry Winthrop Sargent and His Family
- Register of the Mass. Society of Colonial Dames of America: 1893-1905, (p. 83, #144) lists some of Aimee’s ancestors including Emmanuelites Amos & Nathaniel Lawrence.
- The Rev. Dr. A.H. Vinton officiated at the wedding of Mary Allen Robeson (1853-1918), daughter of charter members Andrew (1817-1874) and Mary Allen Robeson (1819-1903), and Charles Sprague Sargent (cousin of H.W. S.), who founded the Arnold Arboretum and wrote many botanical works. Andrew and his wife Mary Allen Robeson lived at Holm Lea across from Fairsted in Brookline. They were memorialized by their daughter Alice Robeson (Mrs. Stephen Van Rensselaer) Thayer in our windows depicting Simeon and Anna. See also:
- Register of the Mass. Society of Colonial Dames of America: 1893-1905, (p. 48, #41) lists Mary’s ancestors who served the Commonwealth.
- Register of the Mass. Society of Colonial Dames of America: 1893-1905, (p. 57, #66) lists even more of Alice’s ancestors.
Simeon (Andrew Robeson, 1817-1874) & Anna (Mary Allen Robeson, 1819-1903) by Harry Eldredge Goodhue
1872
- Consuming 65 acres downtown, the Great Boston Fire killed 12 firefighters and several dozen residents. On Summer Street it destroyed Trinity Church, which the congregation rebuilt 5 years later on Copley Square, several blocks from Emmanuel. Above is John Adams Whipple‘s panorama of the damage looking east from Washington St. at Bromfield Street.
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Eben Dyer Jordan (1822-95). Credit: WikiCommons
Parishioner and founder of Jordan Marsh Co., Eben Dyer Marsh and five others founded the Boston Globe. See also this 1890 biographical sketch by John C. Rand.
1871
Benjamin Smith Rotch (1817-1882) began a three-year term on the vestry with Rector Alexander Hamilton Vinton. The reredos in our Sanctuary was given in memory of him, his wife Annie Bigelow Lawrence, and two of their children.
Thanks to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for this cameo of a younger Benj. S. Rotch.
1870
John Hogg took over from E.R. Mudge as junior warden. He and his wife Emma Whiting Hogg adopted three children about this time. They lived at 50 Commonwealth Ave (at the corner of Berkeley St.). For more about their residences, see Genealogies of Back Bay Houses.
1869
- 27 December. Caroline Maria (née Welch) Crowninshield at the age of 45 married at Emmanuel Howard Payson Arnold, a 39-year-old attorney from Cambridge MA. They came to reside nearby at 156 Beacon Street. See also her memorial window.
- 31 March. Dr. Huntington left to become the first bishop of Central New York.
- The Rev. Dr. Alexander Hamilton Vinton (1807-1881) became our second rector.
For biographical information on Dr. Vinton please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.
See also Timeline 1894.
1868
This snapshot of a postwar vestry includes prominent Bostonians.
E.R. Mudge (1812-1881)
E.P. Dutton (1831-1923) Credit: WikiCommons
- Sr. Warden: Benjamin
Geo. P. Denny (1826-85)
Tyler Reed, Jr. (1864-72)
- Jr. Warden: Enoch Redington Mudge, (1865-72)
- Treasurer: George Parkman Denny (1865-72)
- Clerk: Robert Codman, Sr. (1865-70); father of Robert. Codman, Bishop of Maine
- Vestrymen
- Samuel Turner Dana (1868-71); merchant
- E.P. Dutton (1862-63,1868-69); publisher
- Jonathan French (1863-74)
- Horace Gray, Jr. (1868-69), judge
Horace Gray, Jr., Associate (1864-73) & Chief (1873-82) of the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court; U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1882-1902). Credit: WikiCommons
- S.J.M. Homer (1868-71); hardware merchant
- B.F. Nourse (1865-68); author (with Mudge) of a report on cotton cultivation for the Paris International Exhibition
- Thomas D. Townsend (1865-70)
1867
Parishioner Benjamin Tyler Reed gave $100,000 for the establishment of a school of theology in Cambridge MA, which was incorporated as the Episcopal Theological School. For its 50th anniversary in July 1917, John H. Wilson wrote a brief history on p. 4 of The Witness, which listed among its first board of trustees Emmanuelite Edward Sprague Rand. Early trustees affiliated with Emmanuel included Gov. Alexander H. Rice, Clement Fay, and John H. Burnham.
See also 2021.
photo credit: WikiCommons
E.S. Rand Jr., Harvard College Class of 1855
C.K. Fay (1845-98)
Gov. A.H. Rice
1866
Enoch Redington Mudge
Chapel of the Good Shepherd was consecrated as an independent corporation, the Free Church of the Good Shepherd at 8 Cortes St. in the South End. The mission had begun in 1862 with a Sunday school, which was held in rooms over a carpenter’s shop on Church St. in Bay Village. Among its Emmanuelite founders were the Rev. William R. Huntington, warden John Davis Williams French, and Enoch R. Mudge.
See also: 1880
1865
Having been denied church funding, Rector Dan Huntington raised funds from parishioners, including the French family, to pay for Chapel of the Good Shepherd, which was consecrated.
- April 9. Surrender at Appomattox VA ends the Civil War.
- April 14. President Abraham Lincoln was assisinated.
- Dec. 6. Congress ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which ended slavery in the US.