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The Local Parish as a Female Institution: The Experience of All Saints Episcopal Church in Frontier Minnesota

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Joan R. Gundersen
Joan R. Gundersen
Affiliation:
Associate professor of history and director of women's studies in Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.
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Extract

In recent years historians have begun exploring the feminization of religion in nineteenth-century America. While much of the published debate has centered on the particular definition presented by Ann Douglas in her study, The Feminization of American Culture, other scholars have adopted the term but applied it in different ways. Douglas based her argument on a small sample of liberal Protestant female writers and clergymen in New England whom she saw as giving cultural expression to a new popular theology. She did not explore its impact upon any particular congregation, and much of the controversy surrounding her thesis has focused on the narrow base upon which she made expansive claims. The concept of a feminized church, however, has attracted a number of scholars. Some, like Gerald Moran, have found evidence of the process much earlier in New England, while Mary Ryan and others have explored church membership during the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century. The research continues the Northeastern focus, however, in terms of both geography and denomination. Thus historians still have no sense as to the universality of these trends. In addition, the focus has remained on church membership and cultural perceptions of women's religious role. We have precious little information on how women translated ideas about their role into the life of an ongoing religious institution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 307 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1986

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References

1. For an outline of the basic debate, see Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1979);Google ScholarSchuyler, David, “Inventing a Feminine Past,” New England Quarterly 51(1978): 291–308;CrossRefGoogle ScholarReynolds, David S., “The Feminization Controversy: Sexual Stereotypes and the Paradoxes of Piety in Nineteenth-Century America,” New England Quarterly 53 (1980): 96–106;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShiels, Richard, “The Feminization of American Congregationalism, 1736–1835,” American Quarterly 3 (1981): 46–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. David Reynolds, for example, critiques Ann Douglas's thesis of feminization by stressing the continuation of a “masculine” religion. One of his examples for such “masculine” religion was the frontier; Reynolds, , “Feminization Controversy,” p. 99.Google Scholar David Schuyler is among the scholars who have criticized Douglas for the smallness of her sample and its New England nature; Schuyler, , “Inventing a Feminine Past,” p. 293.Google Scholar

3. See for example Moran, Gerald, “Conditions of Religious Conversion in the First Society of Norwich, Connecticut, 1718–1744,” Journal of Social History 5 (1972): 331–343;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShiels, , “Feminization of Congregationalism,” pp. 46–62;Google ScholarRyan, Mary, The Cradle of the MiddleClass: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1780–1865 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 75–104.Google Scholar

4. Ruether, Rosemary and McLaughlin, Eleanor, Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York, 1979), p. 16.Google Scholar

5. Mary Farrell Bednarowski, for example, has argued that the hierarchical nature of mainstream Protestant churches excluded women from leadership roles; Bednarowski, , “Outside the Mainstream: Women's Religion and Women Religious Leaders in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48 (1980): 207–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Ruether, and McLaughlin, , Women of Spirit, pp. 17–28.Google Scholar

7. The standard history of the diocese is Tanner, George, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, 1857–1907 (Saint Paul, Minn., 1909).Google Scholar The other basic works covering the founding period are all studies of the missionary clergy. See, for example, Whipple, Henry Benjamin, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate (London, 1900);Google ScholarGraves, Anson R., The Farmer Boy Who Became a Bishop (Akron, Ohio, 1911);Google ScholarBurleson, Hugh, An Officer of the Line in the Conquest of the Continent (Hartford, Conn., n.d.).Google Scholar

8. For example, All Saints Church was served by seventeen different priests in its first thirty years. The longest stay of any one was six years. Several stayed less than a year.

9. John North and his family moved on to California. The mobility of others was equally high. Olive Josephine Hull came with her grandmother to Northfield in 1857. She taught school for two years and then returned to New York. A year later she married, in New York, Charles N. Stewart, another New Yorker who had settled in Northfield. They then returned to Minnesota together to live in the Northfleld area. Hiland H. White claimed a farm outside of Northfield in 1855, then moved to Hastings to run a hotel with his brother and returned to Northfield in 1861; MrsStewart, C. N. obituary, Northfield News, 29 06 1923, p. 4Google ScholarWhite, Hiland H. obituary, Northfield News, 26 05 1900, p. 1.Google Scholar

10. For more on the pressures of mobility on frontier institutions see Jeffrey, Julie Roy, Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1880 (New York, 1979), pp. 79–84.Google Scholar

11. All Saints Parish Register, (5 vols.) vol. 1, mss., All Saints Episcopal Church, Northileld, Minn. (hereafter cited as ASC); Secretary's Book of the Episcopal Social Circle, ASC, 21 April 1858, 5 May 1858, pp. 1,6.

12. Committee, Northfield Bicentennial, Continuum: Threads in the Community Fabric of Northfield, Minnesota (Northfield, Minn., 1976), pp. 41–42;Google ScholarScovell, Bessie Lathe, A Brief History of the Minnesota Women's Christian Temperance Union from Its Organization September 6, 1877 to 1939 (1939), pp. 44–54.Google Scholar

13. Northfield Lyceum Minute Book, Typescript, Northfield Public Library, 16 June 1858; Tanner, , Fifty Years, pp. 135, 297.Google Scholar

14. Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, 22 Sept. 1858, ASC, p. 8; Parish Register, vol. 1, ASC.

15. Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC, 6 October. 1858–1826 November. 1863, pp. 8–9.

16. Jeffrey has mixed feelings about women's financial role in frontier churches. She states both that women's financial aid was substantial and that ministers still expected the majority of funds to come from men. However, Jeffrey continues to view the women's contribution as aid rather than to recognize the full range of discretionary activities covered by that term. I would argue that the use of the word “aid” is a social fiction that allowed women to exercise informal power behind the scenes; Jeffrey, , Frontier Women, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar The records of All Saints have not been at risk. The parish has occupied the same building since 1867, and few things have been thrown away. Records before 1866 are sparse, since nonresident clergy served the parish. It was the custom for clergy to keep personal records of births, marriages, and so on, and these records disappeared with the clergy. The women, however, kept control of their own records and thus they survive for the founding years.

17. The proposal also covered forgiving the parish the money already owed for rent. The parish probably had not paid the rent owed from the time it organized; Northfield Lyceum Minutes, Northfield Public Library, 20 Jan. 1860.

18. All Saints was not the only parish forced to recruit nonmembers for its first vestry. The first vestry of the Episcopal Church in Keokuk, Iowa in 1850 included no church members. There, too, women had gathered the first church society; Jeffrey, , Frontier Women, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar In Northfield, the vestry included several of Northfield's leading entrepreneurs but also others who were more obscure; Parish Register, vol. 1, Families, ASC; Julie Walstad, “Northfield's Wealthy Residents of 1870,” Saint Olaf Student Essays on Northfield History (1977), Northfield Public Library, p. 15.

19. John North had restricted the deeds in Northfield so that no liquor could be served in town. See Rice County, Abstracts of Titles–Deeds, Northfield and Village, 1856–1885, Rice County Court House; Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC, 1 Nov. 1860–11 Dec. 1862, PP. 34–57; Stewart, Charles obituary, Northfield News, 19 01. 1917, P. 1;Google ScholarMrsStewart, C. N. obituary, Northfield News, 29 06 1923, p. 4.Google Scholar

20. Shiels, , “Feminization of Congregationalism,” pp. 58–60.Google Scholar A recent study of masonic membership in western New York documents the close ties between the Episcopal church and the masonic orders there. It also suggests that the lodges provided important leadership opportunities to its male members of all social classes; Kutolowski, Kathleen Smith, “Freemasonry and Community in the Early Republic: the Case for Antimasonic Anxieties,” American Quarterly 34 (1982): 543–561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. For a study of such groups in an area from which many Northfield women came, see Hewitt, Nancy, Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984);Google ScholarEpstein, Barbara Leslie, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance tn Nineteenth-Century Amerzca (Middletown, Conn., 1981).Google Scholar

22. Jeffrey argues that community institutions developed after the initial stage of settlement and finds women involved in a variety of activities. In Northfleld the development of congregations coincides with the first settlement; Jeffrey, , Frontier Women, pp. 79–84;Google ScholarScovell, , Women's Christian Temperance Union, pp. 44–54, 249;Google Scholar U.S. Census 1860, Rice County, Bridgewater and Northfield Townships; Minnesota State Census 1865, Rice County, Bridgewater and Northfield Townships.

23. Journal of the Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Minnesota (1860), pp. 27–29.Google Scholar Ann Douglas argues that the clergy and their female parishioners were allies, although the clergy had ambivalent feelings due to their loss of power to the women. The clergy of Minnesota were hardly ambivalent when it came to Grace Church; Douglas, , Feminization, pp. 116–119.Google Scholar

24. Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC, 16 June 1860, P. 30.

25. The Rev. James Lloyd Breck had purchased lots in both Northuleld and nearby Dundas in 1857. He and his wife gave these to the Seabury Mission in 1860. Holy Cross Church eventually was built on the Dundas lots. The plan to purchase lots early in frontier towns is outlined in a letter by N.I.T. Dana to Bishop Whipple. Sarah Wing, an active member of the Social Circle, purchased a lot one block closer to the town center in 1861; she and her husband, Samuel, sold it to the Seabury Mission in 1865. The parish built its church on this lot in 1867. The Seabury Mission then sold the Breck lot in 1869; Rice County, Abstracts of Deeds, Northfield, pp. 98–99, 62–63; Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Minnesota (1865), Pp. 19–20;Google Scholar NIT. Dana to Bishop Whippie, 11 May 1860, Benjamin Henry Whipple Papers, Box 2, Minnesota Historical Society.

26. Journal of the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Minnesota (1867), p. 15.Google Scholar

27. Donovan, Mary, “Zealous Evangelists: the Women's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions,” Historical Magazine 51 (1982): 371.Google Scholar

28. There is an extensive literature on women's networks, including Cott, Nancy, The Bonds of Womenhood: “Women's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1978);Google ScholarSmith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1 (1975): 1–29;CrossRefGoogle ScholarScott, Ann Firor, “What, Then, is the American: This New Women?” Journal of American History 65 (1978): 679–703;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hewitt, Women's Activism. Polly Welts Kaufman's recent study of the letters of evangelical teachers sent to the frontier has illustrated the power of these networks to bind the east and the frontier together; Kaufman, , Women Teachers on the Frontier (New Haven, 1984).Google Scholar

29. The names of vestrymen, naturally, appear on the deeds, but the women's records show that the women had been contributing regularly to a building fund; Rice County, Abstract of Titles, Deeds, Northfield and Village, 1856–1885, vol. 1, pp. 114–115; Rice County, Deed Book 36, p. 337; Rice County Deed Book 32, p. 435; Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC, Oct. 1875, 1 Nov. 1875; Rice County Journal, 14 04 1875, p. 4.Google Scholar

30. Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC, 5 Oct. 1879, pp. 88–90.

31. Rice County Journal, 16 10. 1879, P. 3; 30Google Scholar Oct. 1879, p. 3; 6 Nov. 1879, p. 3; 20 Sept. 1879, p. 3; 27 Sept. 1879, p. 3; 4 Sept. 1879, p. 3.

32. This is a reconstruction pieced together from bits in the newspaper. The editor made a point of noting which men had returned to the church after Yeater left. Several of the vestry were members of the anti-prohibition slate in town elections for 1880; Rice County Journal, 1 Jan. 1880, pp. 2, 3; 4 March. 1880, p. 3. The turnover of ministers in Northfield was due to financial problems, diocesan politics, and exhaustion. With the exception of Yeater and J.D. Ferguson, all other changeovers were for reasons not under the control of the parish.

33. Rice County Journal, 8 03 1883, p. 3;Google ScholarNorthfield News, 16 02. 1889, p. 3;Google Scholar 20 April 1889, p. 3; 29 June 1889, p. 3; Minnesota Missionary and Church Record 27 09. 1903), p. 13;Google Scholar Saint Agnes Guild Minute Book, ASC, 10 Sept. 1912, p. 23; 11 Nov. 1912, p. 31; Northfield News, 4 07 1913, p. 8.Google Scholar

34. For payment of the organist's salary, see the Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC 24 Dec. 1879, p. 94; Ladies Guild Minute Book, ASC, 5 Oct. 1889, 16 Dec. 1889, 21 Jan. 1890, 20 Feb. 1890.

35. Rice County Journal, 25 11. 1880, p. 3.Google Scholar

36. Journal of the Eighth Annual Convention, p. 19. For the Sunday School expenses, see Rice County Journal, 13 11. 1879, p. 3;Google Scholar 20 Nov. 1879, p. 3; MrsDeLancey, Anna Sophia obituary, Northfield News, 28 04 1900, p. 1;Google ScholarMrsAllen, J. S. death notice, Rice County Journal, 3 03 1881, p. 3.Google Scholar

37. Harris, Jane E. to Garland, F. M., 28 04 1917, ASC.Google Scholar

38. Silas Judd to Mrs. Estell Henderson, 20 May 1897, ASC.

39. The membership patterns resemble those found by Mary Ryan in her study of western New York; Ryan, Mary, The Cradle of the Middle Class, pp. 257, 75–104.Google Scholar

40. Burleson apparently tried to reconstruct the earlier records of the parish by filling in the baptisms and confirmations from 1856 to 1864. There are gaps, however, and the membership list for the parish is from 1864; Parish Register, vol. 1, ASC.

41. Secretary's Book, Ladies Social Circle, ASC 23 Sept. 1861, P. 42.

42. The printed version of the diocesan report gives the number of confirmed members as 28, but the parish records list 23. There is probably a transcription error in the printed version; Parish Register, vol. 1, Communicants, ASC, p. 162; Journal of the Eighth Annual Convention, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

43. John DeLancey, the “Grandpa Delancey” of Jane Harris's letter, died in 1863. His daughter Hannah DeLancey had gone to Saint Barnabas House, New York. Both appear on the list. Herman Jenkins Jr., and Sr., also were listed but were absent from Northfield. Women from these families were still in Northfield and probably ensured that Burleson listed the absent members. DeLancey's death is not listed in the parish register, but the date appears on his tombstone and on a church window. The Parish Register communicants' list notes what happened to the others.

44. My measurement for activism was church status. The records list a person as baptized, confirmed, or communicant, representing an ascending order of commitment. My findings parallel those of Richard Shiels for New England Congregational churches; Douglas, , Feminization, pp. 116–117;Google ScholarShiels, , “Feminization of Congregationalism,” pp. 51, 59–60.Google Scholar

45. In the twentieth century the college presence had a strong effect on All Saints Parish, but the parish had no members from either college until after 1880, since Carleton was Congregational and Saint Olaf was Norwegian Lutheran.

46. Donovan, , “Zealous Evangelists,” p. 372.Google ScholarKeller, Rosemary, “Lay Women in the Protestant Tradition,” in Women and Re1igon in America: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Keller, Rosemary Skinner (San Francisco, 1980), pp. 242–243.Google Scholar

47. Mrs. H.C. O'Ferrall to George Tanner, 20 Nov. 1888, Papers of the Diocese of Minnesota, Minnesota State Historical Society Archives, Box 2; Typescript Memoir of Fanny Ripley, n. d., Papers of the Diocese of Minnesota, Minnesota State Historical Society Archives, Box 1; E. Steele Peake to Henry B. Whipple, 19 July 1884, Henry Benjamin Whipple Papers, Minnesota State Historical Society Archives, Box 17; George Tanner to Henry B. Whipple, 18 Dec. 1880, Henry Benjamin Whipple Papers, Minnesota State Historical Society Archives, Box 15; Episcopal Church Women Convention, Faribault Republican, 14 Oct. 1981, suppl.

48. Kaufman, , Women Teachers, pp. 32–33, 192–193, 209;Google ScholarJeffrey, , Frontier Women, pp. 95–104.Google Scholar