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.
June 2. Rector Elwood Worcester presided at the funeral of Dr. Emma W. Davidson Mooers, who had been a parishioner since 1880. She had died on May 31 at 52 of streptococcal meningitis contracted when she and Dr. Elmer Ernest Southard were performing an autopsy. She was one of 13 women to receive an MD from U. of Michigan in 1884, then worked at Northampton State Hospital, McLean Hospital, and the neuropathology laboratory of Dr. Alois Alzheimer in Munich before becoming Custodian of Harvard’s Neuropathological Collection in 1910. Her articles on syphilis and other bacterial infections of the nervous system were published in the precursors to the American Journal of Psychiatry and New England Journal of Medicine. May this pioneer rise in glory!
Dr. Emma W.D. Mooers seated in center with Dr. Alois Alzheimer (back row 3d from right) and co-workers in his Laboratory for Neurology, Munich, 1909.
Credit: Wikicommons
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.
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.
Club Room at Students House, 21-23 St. James Ave.
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:
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.
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.
Anne Bigelow Lawrence Rotch. Portrait by Chester Harding in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Anne Bigelow Lawrence Rotch died. The daughter of Katherine Bigelow and Abbott Lawrence, Annie had married Benjamin S. Rotch in 1846 . Their daughter Aimee (Mrs. Winthrop Henry) Sargent gave our sanctuary’s Rotch reredos in memory of her, her husband, and two of their children, Arthur & Edith. They are buried in a family plot (#3004) on Bellwort Path, Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
The Rev. Dr. Leighton Parks became our third rector.
He requested free seats at afternoon services, which required releases of pew holders’ rights. For biographical information on Dr. Parks please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.
The Dakota League was incorporated into the Massachusetts branch of the Women’s Auxiliary to the Episcopal Board of Missions, which had formed in 1871. Since its founding here in 1864, the League had raised $56K for Native Americans and $8500 for freedmen, according to the Boston Evening Transcript of 18 October.
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.