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ST. PAULS, ALTON 
 
HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH 
 
 Alton, Illinois 
 
 by 
 
 Guy Study, F. A. I. A. 
 
 1 
 
 Illustration 
 
 by 
 
 Alfred Majers, A. I. A. 
 
 &£. &<& &€> tm 
 
 MOUND CITY PRESS, INC. 
 
 ST. LOUIS, MO. 
 1943 
 
Copyright 1944 
 
 by 
 
 Guy Study 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 These pages were prompted by a suggestion made by 
 Mr. Harry B. Mathews, Jr. at a meeting of the vestry of 
 St. Paul's Church in the spring of 1942. At this meeting 
 Mr. Mathews called attention to the fact that the tower of 
 the church had stood in an unfinished state since the tor- 
 nado in I860, or for a period of eighty-two years, and pro- 
 posed that it be rebuilt in its original design, or if that 
 were impracticable, to finish it off in keeping with the 
 architecture of the church. 
 
 This suggestion called for considerable research, on our 
 part as architects, into the history of the building and con- 
 sequently revealed the fact that the present church is the 
 second structure to stand on the site. In 1834 Capt. 
 Benjamin Godfrey built a neat stone church at the corner 
 of Third and Market Street. For some ten or twelve years 
 the building was used by several different religious organi- 
 zations but as the First Presbyterian Church made the 
 building its permanent home, during these years the struc- 
 ture became known as the Presbyterian Church. In 1845 
 St. Paul's Parish purchased the building and from then on 
 held services there. In these pages this building is referred 
 to as St. Paul's Church. In view of the fact that the build- 
 ing never was the property of the First Presbyterian 
 Church, strictly speaking, from 1834 to 1845 it should be 
 referred to as Capt. Godfrey's Church. The church records 
 in Alton were of little or no assistance; in fact scarcely any 
 existed except the recorded minutes of the vestry which 
 began with the year 1859. In gathering in small bits from 
 one source or another these historical data, it soon became 
 
evident that the present church is in reality an enlargement 
 of the first church, in and about which, many historic events 
 in the life of Alton took place. The thought then came to 
 the author of these pages to put these data together in the 
 form of a record or a history of the church. 
 
 No record could be found in Alton of the date when the 
 vestry of St. Paul's was formed. This important date in the 
 history of the parish was found in the April, 1836, issue of 
 the Spirit of Missions. It is an extraordinary fact that St. 
 Paul's Parish was not incorporated until 1937. For over a 
 century the parish had operated, passed through sixteen 
 different administrations of rectors, bought a church, built 
 a new church, constructed a rectory and a parish house, 
 without establishing its legal status as a corporate entity. 
 
 The history of St. Paul's Church is, in a way, a history of 
 Alton. Consecrated by hallowed associations the old build- 
 ing, in a sense, belongs to the city. In order to give a back- 
 ground of the early years of the Church in Illinois, as well 
 as in Alton, the author has felt it appropriate to include 
 brief historical outlines, which perforce, are scarcely more 
 than notes, but which, it is hoped, may help to recall the 
 events that St. Paul's from its station at Third and Market 
 Street has looked out upon. The prominent role that St. 
 Paul's played in the events which brought about the tragic 
 end of Elijah P. Lovejoy, is part of the proud history of 
 St. Paul's. In order to recall what manner of man it was 
 that established the Episcopal Church in Illinois, a sketch 
 of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Chase is also included. 
 
 All dates and facts here recorded pertaining to the 
 founding of the Episcopal Church in Illinois and to the 
 early years of St. Paul's Parish have been taken from the 
 Journal of the General Convention, the Spirit of Missions, 
 and from the Journal of the Convention of the Diocese of 
 
Illinois, here-in referred to as the Journal of the Diocese of 
 Illinois. 
 
 The files of The Alton Observer, the Alton Telegraph 
 and the Alton Weekly Courier have been consulted. Gazet- 
 teers, city directories and the standard histories of Madison 
 County and of the State of Illinois have been freely drawn 
 upon. 
 
 Acknowledgment is hereby made to the Rt. Rev. John C. 
 White, Bishop of Springfield, the Rt. Rev. William L. 
 Essex, Bishop of Quincy, the Rev. Father Marsden E. Whit- 
 ford, Rector of St. Paul's Church, Alton, Mr. Paul Cousley, 
 Mr. Paul Angle, Mr. Frank H. Duggan, Mr. Paul Reid, 
 Mr. Norman Flagg, Messrs. George D. and John M. Pfeif- 
 fenberger, Mr. James Hayes and Mrs. Elizabeth Gerhart, 
 the staffs of the Hayner Library, the Missouri Historical 
 Society, the St. Louis Public Library, the Mercantile Library 
 and the Library of Congress for much kind assistance. 
 
RECTORS of ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 Rev. James De Pui 1836-1838 
 
 Rev. William Douglas 1839 
 
 Rev. Thomas S. Britton 1844-1845 
 
 Rev. Dr. S. Y. McMasters .1846-1858 
 
 Rev. C. A. Bruce 1859-1861 
 
 Rev. John Foster 1861-1864 
 
 Rev. Dr. McCullough 1864-1866 
 
 Rev. C. S. Abbott 1867-1872 
 
 Rev. Marsh Chase 1873-1880 
 
 Rev. Thomas W. Haskins 1880-1883 
 
 Rev. Francis M. S. Taylor 1883-1889 
 
 Rev. Horace Goodyear 1890-1891 
 
 Rev. Father George T. Griffith 1892 
 
 Rev. Father Henry M. Chittenden 1893-1910 
 
 Rev. Father Arthur Godyer 1911-1916 
 
 Rev. Father Fredrick D. Butler 1917-1924 
 
 Rev. Father Robert Hall Atchison 1925-1941 
 
 Rev. Father Marsden E. Whitford 1941- 
 
The HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
 
 of 
 
 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 St. Paul's Church as it stands today, on the corner of 
 Third and Market Street, is a building that has gone 
 through many changes and through many alterations. The 
 first church built on this site was built by Capt. Benjamin 
 Godfrey in 1834. The walls were of rubble stone and the 
 architecture was a severe type of Greek-Colonial which was 
 then in vogue. Just what portions of this building remain 
 is a debatable question, but we may be reasonably certain 
 that many sections of the old walls still stand. 
 
 When we recall that on this site divine service has been 
 continuously conducted for 109 years, and that the stones 
 in the walls of St. Paul's have witnessed the whole pano- 
 rama of the history of Alton and have been intimately asso- 
 ciated with some of the most exciting events of this history, 
 the historical importance of this venerable structure is 
 vividly impressed upon our minds. 
 
 Madison County played an important role in the early 
 history of Illinois. The first white settlers to reach the sec- 
 tion arrived about 1800. Most of them came from Ken- 
 tucky and from Virginia, while some came from the eastern 
 states. In 1800 Congress had created Indiana Territory 
 which included all of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan with 
 Vincennes as the seat of government. Within nine years 
 twelve thousand people had settled in the region between 
 the Wabash and the Mississippi Rivers. In 1809 Congress 
 
2 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 cut off Illinois from Indiana Territory and formed the Ter- 
 ritory of Illinois. At that date all of the northern part of 
 the Territory of Illinois was a wilderness and there were 
 still wild prairies, with Indians roaming about, between 
 Vincennes and Kaskaskia. It was not until after the Wood 
 River massacre in 1814 that the Indians left Madison 
 County. 
 
 In 1818, when Illinois was made a state, the population 
 had reached 40,000, with three-fourths of the people living 
 south of Madison County. The first legislature convened 
 at Kaskaskia in 1818 and voted to make Vandalia the cap- 
 ital, even though that part of the state was still wild and 
 undeveloped. Between 1820 and 1830 thousands of settlers 
 moved into central and western Illinois; many towns were 
 built in these sections, but for some two hundred miles 
 along the course of the Mississippi, no town had been built 
 that could serve as a river port for the rich farm lands that 
 lay to the east. All the produce of these sections had to be 
 taken to St. Louis for shipment. 
 
 From Little Piasa Creek north for one hundred miles the 
 high bluffs came close to the river; to the south began the 
 American Bottom which was subject to the overflow from 
 the Mississippi; but here, where Little Piasa Creek emptied 
 into the Mississippi, there was space, limited to be sure, 
 but sufficient for a settlement; and here too was a natural 
 landing for boats. 
 
 In 1817 Rufus Easton, the first postmaster of St. Louis, 
 acquired this land at the mouth of Little Piasa Creek, laid 
 it out in streets and in lots, built three or four log cabins, 
 a ferry house, established a ferry and named the tract 
 "Alton," after his son by that name. For three or four 
 years the little settlement did well; possibly fifteen or 
 twenty houses were built during this period. In A Gazet- 
 teer of the States of Illinois and Missouri, by Lewis C. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 3 
 
 Beck, published in 1823, Alton is described as a rapidly 
 growing settlement which, although at the time unimpor- 
 tant, gave evidence of becoming some day an important 
 commercial city. Beck stated that the road from the East, 
 leading to Boone's Lick and the Salt River country of Mis- 
 souri, ran through Alton using Fountain's Ferry to cross 
 the Mississippi. 
 
 The title to much of the land in Madison County at first 
 was not as satisfactory as it might have been. This was 
 due to the fact that many of the original claims had been 
 taken up in a loose manner by some of the old French set- 
 tlers who came from Cahokia and from Kaskaskia. After 
 Rufus Easton started his settlement at the mouth of Little 
 Piasa Creek, Ninian Edwards and Nathaniel Pope, two men 
 of influence in early Illinois, obtained a claim to the same 
 site and instituted legal proceedings in court to sustain their 
 claim. This litigation naturally slowed up the development 
 that had been started. Newcomers were afraid to settle in 
 Alton and those who were there began to move away. 
 There is reason to believe that Alton almost passed out of 
 existence about 1828 or 1829. In a paper prepared for the 
 semi-centennial of the First Presbyterian Church of Alton 
 held in 1881, Mr. Winthrop S. Gilman wrote: 
 
 "In 1829 I went to Alton to sell goods and to 
 purchase produce. I passed over Little Piasa Creek 
 and about a half a mile beyond I found a wood- 
 cutter and inquired of him where Alton was. He 
 replied it was where I had passed a house that 
 was occupied at the creek. There was but one 
 house occupied in the town." 
 
 The disputed ownership was finally settled by a division 
 of the land between the contending parties, after which 
 people immediately began to move back to Alton. The 
 
4 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 location of the town near the confluence of the Missouri 
 with the Mississippi and but a few miles below the point 
 where the Illinois empties into the Mississippi, together 
 with the prospect of diverting part of the traffic of the 
 Great Lakes down the Illinois by means of the Chicago 
 Canal which was being planned at the time, were persua- 
 sive arguments and convinced the first inhabitants that 
 Alton was destined, some day, to become a great metro- 
 polis. 
 
 Within a few years the little settlement made astonishing 
 progress. The population increased rapidly, so rapidly in 
 fact, that it was difficult to take care of the influx of peo- 
 ple. Houses could not be built fast enough. Mechanics 
 such as carpenters and stone masons were in great demand. 
 It is said that river boats were for a few years used to 
 house part of the population. This rapid development of 
 Alton from 1830 to 1837 was nothing less than spectacular. 
 
 The primitive state of the country, the costumes of the 
 people, and the type of buildings being erected gave color 
 to the scene. In 1834, the year that Capt. Godfrey built 
 St. Paul's Church, Alton must have been an intensely inter- 
 esting sight. The streets were full of activity with men 
 from every walk of life. Adventurers, speculators and 
 gamblers mingled freely with substantial business men, 
 enterprising merchants and honest laborers. The town like- 
 wise had its share of riffraff that was common to all river 
 towns; its Tontine Row was noted for grog shops and 
 coffee houses. 
 
 The clothes worn by the people helped to make the 
 scene picturesque. The frontier costume of linsey hunting 
 shirt, long jacket, buckskin breeches fastened tight at the 
 ankle, and moccasins, had been discarded a few years pre- 
 viously for more civilized clothes. In the early 1830's men 
 were wearing ruffled shirts, waistcoats, close fitting long 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 5 
 
 tailed coats in rich colors of purple, dark green or tan. 
 The pantaloons were usually loose and baggy, and on some 
 dandies, were worn tight fitting and held down by a strap 
 that fitted snugly under the sole of the boot. High beaver 
 hats with bell shaped tops and gracefully rolling rims were 
 becoming the fashion. Women's clothes were no longer 
 plain; the shawl and the handkerchief were seldom seen. 
 Dresses were no longer made from homespun fabrics; silk 
 and calico had become the fashion. 
 
 From a point of view of beauty, the situation of Alton 
 was fortunate; nestling in the valley formed by Little Piasa 
 Creek the town, viewed from the river boats, was both a 
 pleasing and a picturesque sight. The row of quaint but 
 substantial warehouses along the river front, the gray walls 
 of the penitentiary on the west side of the town, the little 
 red brick and white stone houses and the churches with 
 their spires rising out of the hillside, gave Alton the 
 appearance of a New England seaport town such as Ports- 
 mouth or Newburyport rather than a Mississippi River 
 town. The rough topography of the site made transporta- 
 tion from one section of the town to another exceedingly 
 difficult. The steep hills so separated the sections that they 
 became known as Lower Alton, Upper Alton, Middletown 
 and North Alton. As one drives over the city today, he is 
 impressed with the fact that it called for courage and 
 determination to build a city upon these hills. 
 
 Within a few years Alton was widely known throughout 
 the United States, and from the start the town attracted an 
 unusually large number of high type men who by bold, 
 resolute initiative soon became successful in business. One 
 of these men was Capt. Benjamin Godfrey who came to 
 Alton in 1832 or 1833. Coming originally from Connecti- 
 cut, Capt. Godfrey had led an interesting and an exciting 
 life before arriving in Alton. When a young lad, he had 
 
6 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 run away from home to go to sea. For a few years, Ireland 
 was his home; then as a captain of a sailing vessel, he 
 acquired a sizeable fortune, only to lose it when his ship 
 was wrecked off the coast of Mexico. Remaining in Mexico 
 for a few years, he accumulated a second fortune of some 
 $200,000 which he converted into silver and started back to 
 the United States. On the way he was relieved of his 
 treasure by bandits. He has told that he sat down by the 
 side of the road and wept over his misfortune. But within 
 two or three years he was in business in New Orleans. His 
 affairs there brought him into contact with Mr. Winthrop 
 S. Gilman of Alton and subsequently brought him to Alton 
 as a partner of Mr. Gilman. 
 
 It was not long after Capt. Godfrey arrived in Alton 
 that he became convinced that Alton had a future, and with 
 determination he set about to help make the town a com- 
 mercial and a cultural center. There were no church build- 
 ings in Alton when he first came; the few religious organi- 
 zations that existed were meeting in private homes or in 
 temporary buildings. He had been in Alton scarcely a year 
 when he began the building, with his own funds, of a neat 
 stone church on the corner of Third and Market Street and 
 offered the building for use of all organized religious 
 bodies in the town. From that time on until his death in 
 1862, there were but few important civic enterprises under- 
 taken in Alton that did not have the active support of Capt. 
 Godfrey. As a business man and as a philanthropist Capt. 
 Godfrey's name will forever be intimately associated with 
 the early history of Alton. He will be best remembered as 
 the founder, trustee and benefactor of Monticello Seminary 
 at Godfrey, Illinois, an institution which for over a century 
 has held a highly esteemed reputation. 
 
 With the possible exception of the Alton Riots, the events 
 that occurred in the first decade in the real life of Alton 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 7 
 
 may not be of great moment; yet there is about them the 
 glamour of romance and a halo of color that subsequent 
 events do not have. The hardships and the uncertainties 
 of the frontier had not yet been entirely conquered; men 
 were experimenting with what they termed "the infant 
 resources of the nation," and were striving hard to adjust 
 themselves to a new order of life. With something akin to 
 childlike simplicity, comparatively inconsequential events 
 loomed large and shone with such brilliance in the eyes of 
 the pioneers that their reflections penetrate the present and 
 fascinate us today. 
 
 In 1835 a wave of speculation in real estate swept over 
 the whole of the United States. The boom in Illinois 
 started in Chicago where the price of land rose in leaps 
 and bounds. Fortunes were made almost over night. The 
 craze soon swept throughout the entire state, and within a 
 short period of time every little town and hamlet had 
 dreams of greatness. In Alton the price of lots rose two 
 hundred or three hundred per cent in less than a year. 
 Along with this wild speculation in land went a desire on 
 the part of the people of the state for a vast program of 
 internal improvements, such as waterways and railroads. 
 A great railroad system was planned of which Alton was 
 to be the center. About this time pressure from Alton was 
 being put on Congress to have the National Road, which 
 was being slowly built across the nation, terminate at Alton. 
 Alton already had the state penitentiary and was planning 
 to get other state institutions established there. There was 
 even hope, in 1836, that Alton might be made the capital. 
 
 The astonishing progress that Alton had made from 1830 
 to 1836 gave the community the ambition to attempt to 
 make itself a great commercial center, one that would out- 
 strip its neighbor, St. Louis, and take from it the control of 
 the commerce of the Upper Mississippi. The State Bank 
 
8 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 having been re-organized in 1835, endeavored to assist in 
 this enterprise by loaning to the merchants of Alton the 
 sum of about $1,000,000 to be used in expanding the busi- 
 ness of the town. Godfrey, Gilman and Company were 
 given some $800,000 to gain control of the lead industry 
 of the state; Stone, Manning and Company were given sev- 
 eral hundred thousand dollars with which to operate in 
 produce. While all of these undertakings failed com- 
 pletely; the bubble of speculation in land blew up; the con- 
 trol of the lead trade remained in St. Louis; the dream of 
 Alton as a great railroad center vanished; the National 
 Road did not reach Vandalia until 1852, and then only as 
 a dirt road west of the Wabash; and the capital went to 
 Springfield; nevertheless Alton had forced itself into prom- 
 inence and had become one of the most talked of towns in 
 the country. Indeed, it had built itself up into a substan- 
 tial community with every prospect of a brilliant future. 
 
 In 1836 Alton was visited by Mr. Chandler B. Gilman, 
 traveler and author. In Life on the Lakes, published in 
 1837, he wrote: 
 
 "The captain of the boat called us on deck to 
 get our first view of Alton. You can imagine that 
 I looked with great eagerness for the first glance 
 of a place about which I had heard so much. . . . 
 I spent the whole day rambling about the town. 
 The number of buildings in progress is very great, 
 many are of stone, and some are three stories high. 
 There is great appearance of business here. The 
 streets are thronged with wagons from the country 
 bringing in produce and taking things away. One 
 farmer that I talked to came from far up the Mis- 
 souri. Alton has a feeling of great stability and 
 permanency, as though the men of today expected 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 9 
 
 to be here tomorrow, which contrasts favorably 
 with so many other places." 
 
 Bishop Kemper, in a letter to the Spirit of Missions 
 wrote on March 3, 1836: 
 
 "The town is growing and I believe it will con- 
 tinue to grow with rapidity and strength. Its 
 inhabitants are full of enterprise and are united as 
 one man in promoting its prosperity/* 
 
 Elijah P. Love joy writing in the Alton Observer in 1836 
 stated there were between two hundred and three hundred 
 buildings constructed in Alton that year and that the town 
 was literally overrun by newcomers, yet only two years pre- 
 viously the town had just begun to attract general attention. 
 He gave as his impression, this rapid growth was due to 
 the fact that the leading men of the town had established 
 it upon a broad basis of public morality and Christian 
 benevolence. He reported in his paper that Alton in 1837 
 had contributed more towards religious and civic purposes 
 than any other town in the state. 
 
 The commerce of all frontier towns at first consisted 
 largely of buying and selling the produce from the out- 
 lying country. In this Alton rapidly developed an extensive 
 trade. Very few western towns could boast of stores and 
 of warehouses equal to those in Alton. With a natural 
 landing for boats the river trade quickly developed. In 
 1836 more than a thousand boats docked at Alton. The 
 first bank had been established in the town in 1834. In 
 1836 the Alton Telegraph was a lively going paper. Some 
 manufacturing had been started; a flour mill and a saw 
 mill were in operation. Along with the commercial devel- 
 opment of the town went a cultural development. Shurt- 
 leff College had been moved to Alton, and about this time 
 
10 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 Capt. Godfrey was planning to build Monticello Seminary. 
 The first public school was opened in 1838. 
 
 The rivalry of Alton over St. Louis is borne out by the 
 fact that a story has persisted for years in both St. Louis 
 and in Alton to the effect that Alton is older than St. Louis; 
 and as an embellishment of the story one still hears it said 
 that at one time mail for St. Louis was regularly addressed 
 "St. Louis near Alton. ,, In view of facts, it is difficult to 
 account for either of these stories. Founded in 1764, St. 
 Louis in 1837 had a population of eight thousand and was 
 seventy-three years old, while Alton's population in 1837 
 was only two thousand. For its first forty years, St. Louis 
 was distinctly a French town, although it had been under 
 the control of Spain. Up until 1800 St. Louis had but little 
 intercourse with the people living in the states along the 
 Atlantic sea-board. Like the old French living in Cahokia 
 and Kaskaskia, who for almost a century had scarcely 
 turned a hand to penetrate the wide prairies to the east of 
 them and had carried on all their commerce with New 
 Orleans, the French town of St. Louis, fixed and contented 
 with its traditions and its own manner of life, looked to the 
 south rather than to the east. St. Louis had grown slowly; 
 it had taken the town a half century to acquire a population 
 that Alton had acquired in less than seven years; but in 
 1830, when Alton was just beginning, St. Louis was one of 
 the best known cities in the West. It had already played 
 an important part in the development of the nation; for 
 years the federal government had considered St. Louis as 
 holding a position of great commercial importance. It had 
 a bank and a newspaper almost twenty years before Alton 
 came into being. In A History of Illinois Thomas Ford 
 states that the attempt of Alton to outstrip St. Louis was 
 a hopeless undertaking inasmuch as the merchants of St. 
 Louis had ten times the capital of the State Bank, and 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 11 
 
 besides, held control of the steamers that plied the Upper 
 Mississippi and the Illinois River. 
 
 The Post Office Department has no record of mail for 
 St. Louis being addressed "St. Louis near Alton.' , As early 
 as 1804, when President Jefferson made Rufus Easton post- 
 master at St. Louis, a post route was running between 
 Vincennes, Kaskaskia and St. Louis, and while the delivery 
 of mail over this route was for years very unsatisfactory, 
 by 1820 the route had been greatly improved, sufficiently, 
 at least, to cause an editor of an Indiana newspaper to com- 
 ment on the excellent accommodations offered by the tav- 
 erns along the way. Mail routes were running also between 
 St. Charles, St. Louis, Vandalia and New Orleans as early 
 as 1820. In his History of Madison County W. T. Norton 
 states that the story of the mail was fabricated by some 
 joker in the 1840's. In all probability it arose from the 
 great activity that Alton displayed during those first six or 
 seven romantic years when the town was being talked about 
 and advertised all over the United States. At all events, if 
 Alton was not destined to pass St. Louis in growth, it was, 
 at least, destined to grow and to prosper. 
 
 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY 
 
 1836 
 
 The year 1836 opened fair for Alton and for the first 
 few months there was every reason to suppose that the 
 almost unprecedented growth of the past four or five years 
 in the commercial and the cultural life of the town would 
 continue. During the summer of 1836, a young, well-edu- 
 cated, Presbyterian minister, Elijah P. Lovejoy, became a 
 citizen of Alton, and in doing so unwittingly brought 
 calamity not only upon himself but upon the whole com- 
 munity. Of all the events in the annals of Alton, there is 
 none that brought Alton into more prominence or gave 
 
12 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 more historical importance to St. Paul's Church, than the 
 riots which occurred on account of the fact that Lovejoy 
 brought to Alton a number of printing presses for the pur- 
 pose of publishing an anti-slavery newspaper. 
 
 Before coming to Alton, Lovejoy for a few years had 
 been publishing in St. Louis a religious paper which he 
 called the St. Louis Observer. The paper had been devoted 
 mostly to attacks upon the Roman Catholic Church and 
 upon slavery. Missouri being a slave state and St. Louis 
 being a city with a large Roman Catholic population, these 
 attacks aroused public resentment. On July 21, 1836, a mob 
 of angry citizens stormed the office of the St. Louts Observer 
 and destroyed much property, but did not destroy the 
 press. After this outrage Lovejoy deemed it advisable to 
 leave St. Louis and having been given assurances of wel- 
 come by some of the leading citizens of Alton, he sent his 
 press there. Lovejoy had reason to believe that he could 
 continue to publish his paper in Illinois without interfer- 
 ence. Illinois was a free state; it was to Madison County 
 that the distinguished Virginian Edward Coles had taken 
 his slaves and set them free; in Jacksonville was the Rev. 
 Edward Beecher, where just a short year before, as Paxton 
 Hibben tells in his Henry Ward Beecher * 'Lovejoy and 
 Edward Beecher, in the latter's house in Jacksonville, kneel- 
 ing on the floor, their arms out-stretched over the dining 
 room table, their hands clasped, were beseeching the guid- 
 ance of God as to what they could best do to defend 'the 
 sacred right of a free press . . . the vital and essential prin- 
 ciple of our nation's life.' "; in Edwardsville was the Rev. 
 Thomas Lippincotte; in Quincy the Rev. David Nelson and 
 in Alton there was the Rev. Frank Graves; all outspoken 
 anti-slavery men. 
 
 Lovejoy's press arrived in Alton on Sunday, July 24th, 
 and was allowed to remain on the river bank all that day. 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 13 
 
 Early Monday morning a small group of men, some said 
 to have come from St. Louis, threw the press into the river. 
 That same Monday, late in the afternoon, a call meeting 
 assembled a large number of indignant citizens. They met 
 in St. Paul's Church, then known as, the Presbyterian 
 Church. During this meeting Lovejoy was called upon to 
 state the conditions under which he would consent to pub- 
 lish his paper in Alton. This he did with clearness, deter- 
 mination and dignity, closing his remarks with those ring- 
 ing words, which perhaps, better than any others ever 
 spoken, express the right of free speech: "But gentlemen, 
 as long as I am an American citizen, and as long as Amer- 
 ican blood flows in these veins, I shall hold myself at 
 liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please 
 on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country 
 for the same/' 
 
 These citizens that had assembled in St. Paul's Church 
 were desirous that the Alton Observer continue its publica- 
 tion in Alton and gave Lovejoy renewed assurance of their 
 support. After procuring a new press, Lovejoy continued 
 to publish his paper, now called the Alton Observer, for 
 about a year unmolested. During this period the paper 
 published a number of articles written to show that slavery 
 was a great wrong; these articles were not in any sense 
 inflammatory; they were beautiful, dignified, scholarly writ- 
 ten articles, but they left no doubt in the minds of their 
 readers where the author stood on the question of slavery. 
 
 It is difficult to understand why, in the spring of 1837, 
 public sentiment in Alton turned against Lovejoy. Alton 
 at that time had a reputation for morality and religion 
 above every other town in the state, and besides, the New 
 England element was supposed to be the dominating influ- 
 ence in the town. This failure of the majority of the citi- 
 zens of Alton to stand behind Lovejoy is indicative of the 
 
14 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 almost universal acceptance of the institution of slavery in 
 1837. The Peoria Register in 1837 commenting on the 
 Alton Riots conceded that "Christian philanthropy and 
 public and private enterprise gave Alton a high character 
 which the entire West had awarded her." With the envia- 
 ble position that Alton had created for itself in 1837, it is 
 today difficult to understand how the Alton Riots were pos- 
 sible; but in all probability, had Lovejoy set up his press 
 in any other northern city than Alton, his fate would have 
 been the same. In 1837 the nation was just beginning to 
 form its final judgment on the question of slavery. Love- 
 joy and a few fearless men were quite alone in their con- 
 demnation of the evil, but it was these men who were 
 really forming the nation's final decision which was not to 
 be spoken for a quarter of a century later. 
 
 It was in the early part of the summer of 1837 when pub- 
 lic sentiment in Alton first spoke out against Lovejoy. The 
 circulation of the Alton Observer had jumped from 483 in 
 January to over 2,000 in July, and when the paper, on July 
 5th, issued a call for the forming in the fall of an Illinois 
 State Anti-Slavery Society, there was cause for alarm 
 amongst the Southern sympathizers. 
 
 On July 11th, a public meeting was held in the old mar- 
 ket house which stood in the center of Market Street less 
 than two hundred feet away down the hill from St. Paul's 
 Church. At this meeting Lovejoy was publicly criticised 
 and was advised to discontinue his publication if it were 
 to continue to attack slavery. In August the Missouri 
 Republican, a paper published in St. Louis, printed two 
 editorials derogatory to Lovejoy and advising Alton to take 
 steps to stop the Alton Observer. 
 
 On August 21st the mob again took matters in its own 
 hands and this time completely wrecked the office of the 
 Alton Observer. Again the friends of Lovejoy came to his 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 15 
 
 rescue and a new press was sent for. When it arrived, on 
 September 21st, it too was destroyed. This was the third 
 press that had been destroyed in Alton; but Lovejoy still 
 undismayed, with funds sent him from friends in Ohio, 
 ordered a fourth press. For some time excitement in Alton 
 had been intense; it was now increasing daily; within a 
 few weeks it rose to a state of public insanity; the business 
 of the town came almost to a standstill. 
 
 Towards the end of October the delegates to the Anti- 
 Slavery Society meeting, which the Alton Observer had 
 called, began to arrive in Upper Alton. The Rev. Dr. 
 Edward Beecher had come down from Jacksonville to 
 attend the meeting and to deliver a series of lectures. A 
 few days after his arrival he defied the pro-slavery element 
 in Lower Alton and announced that he would deliver one 
 of his lectures in St. Paul's Church. The Southern sympa- 
 thizers let it be known that this lecture was not to take 
 place; but the Rev. Dr. Beecher was not a man to be 
 deterred from what he felt a duty by mere threats; nor 
 were the friends of Lovejoy in Alton willing to back down. 
 Henry Tanner tells us: "We had formed a company and 
 were ready to repel an attack." The night of the Rev. Dr. 
 Beecher's lecture, St. Paul's was filled with people and in 
 the front vestibule was stationed an armed guard of some 
 fifteen or twenty men with muskets in their hands. During 
 his lecture the Rev. Dr. Beecher affirmed and asserted that 
 there should be no compromise and that the Alton Observer 
 must continue and Lovejoy must be defended. While the 
 Rev. Dr. Beecher was speaking the mob was forming out- 
 side of the church, and shortly a brick was hurled through 
 one of the west windows of the nave. Instantly the brother 
 of Henry Tanner, seated in the gallery, called out, "To 
 arms!" Whereupon the armed guard rushed out and 
 quickly dispersed the attackers. Henry Tanner in describ- 
 
16 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 ing this eventful evening wrote: "In a few minutes the 
 church door was flanked on either side by armed men whom 
 it was not safe for a mob to attack." 
 
 The address of the Rev. Dr. Beecher in St. Paul's Church 
 was the signal for quick and decided action on the part of 
 both parties. The fourth press which had been ordered 
 was expected to arrive any day. The friends of Lovejoy 
 anticipating trouble enlarged their forces and began to pre- 
 pare for whatever might occur. Events from then on 
 moved swiftly, coming to an end on that fateful night of 
 November 7, 1837. That night Alton was wild with excite- 
 ment and the bell in the steeple of St. Paul's Church was 
 rung for over an hour announcing the tragic end of Elijah 
 P. Lovejoy. 
 
 The news of Lovejoy 's death shook the nation; it stirred 
 the indignation of William Lloyd Garrison; it aroused the 
 eloquence of Wendell Phillips; and lighted a flame of 
 resentment throughout the land. The first American mar- 
 tyr to the cause of free speech and to the cause of slavery 
 had forfeited his life. A noble, Christian gentleman had 
 been killed. No one can follow the life of Elijah P. Love- 
 joy or read any of his numerous writings without being 
 impressed by his command of the English language, his 
 unflinching courage, the beauty of his character and his 
 trust and his belief in God; nor can one altogether over- 
 look his intolerance and his deep and unjustified prejudice 
 against the Church of Rome, which was perhaps the one 
 and only weakness in the character of Elijah P. Lovejoy. 
 
 In Springfield, Sandburg tells us a young lawyer, twenty- 
 eight years of age, was shocked by the news that came from 
 Alton. "Feet on the office table, gazing across the public 
 square, he sat huddled with his thoughts." He did not 
 act; but twenty years later Lincoln fully realized that Love- 
 joy had died a martyr to a great cause. It was so with 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 17 
 
 Alton. In less than twenty years after the death of Love- 
 joy, the columns of the Alton Weekly Courier were filled 
 with anti-slavery articles; the Courier was no longer afraid 
 to speak, to write and to publish what it pleased. 
 
 The Alton Riots proved to be a serious blow to Alton; 
 they set the town back for years; but as time went by, the 
 town recovered from the effects of the depressing year of 
 1837, and a half century later, a new generation raised the 
 graceful lofty column, crowned with a figure of Victory 
 soaring high above the city, in veneration of Elijah P. 
 Lovejoy. 
 
 The PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH in the 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 The slow growth that the Episcopal Church made in the 
 states west of the Alleghanies was due to an accumulation 
 of difficulties. The missionary priests sent to these states 
 worked for years under tremendous handicaps. The fact 
 that the Church moved on triumphantly in these states dur- 
 ing those trying years of the first half century after the 
 American Revolution, filled as they were with dissensions 
 and disagreements inside the Church, and even with a 
 passive attitude on the part of some of the bishops towards 
 the extension of the Church in these states, is surely proof 
 of its mighty destiny and its divine mission. 
 
 The Protestant Episcopal Church that was organized in 
 the year 1789 by the union of all Episcopal churches in the 
 General Convention at Philadelphia had none too firm a 
 foundation upon which to build. In the years before the 
 Revolution the Church of England in the colonies was far 
 from being in an ideal state. In New England, outside of 
 the few larger cities, the Church scarcely existed. In the 
 southern colonies the state of the Church was somewhat 
 
18 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 different due to plantation life. Wherever a royal governor 
 had been stationed a semi-state Church had been set up, in 
 which case the parish naturally prospered. The degree of 
 prosperity, however, depended upon the political and the 
 economic life and also upon the temperament of the colon- 
 ists. 
 
 All of the colonial churches were under the control of 
 the Bishop of London, who at different times sent a com- 
 missioner to represent him. It was at best but a loose 
 arrangement and any real uniform control or supervision 
 was impossible. Great difficulty was experienced in obtain- 
 ing priests for the parishes. A few Americans had gone to 
 England for ordination but the majority of the clergy were 
 Englishmen or Scotsmen. As early as 1700 the different 
 churches had petitioned the Crown to furnish them with a 
 bishop so that a strong organization could be established, 
 but for over seventy years these requests were flatly refused. 
 Confirmation being a physical impossibility, it was almost 
 a forgotten rite in America in pre-Revolutionary times. 
 
 As political differences arose between the colonists and 
 the Crown, differences arose between the laity and the 
 clergy; as the resentment of the colonists became more 
 intense, and the break with the mother country came nearer 
 and nearer, the great majority of the Episcopal clergy began 
 to take a stand on the side of England. In his History of 
 the American Episcopal Church S. D. McConnell points 
 out: "When the Continental Congress set aside July 20, 
 1775, as a day of fasting and prayer, and called upon all 
 Christians to assemble in their accustomed places of wor- 
 ship, all but four of the clergy in the country opened their 
 churches; but the real sentiment of the clergy was expressed 
 in the sermons preached that day." Compromise was 
 stressed, but this proposal was given anything but friendly 
 consideration by the people. The position of the clergy 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 19 
 
 soon became intolerable; public sentiment became aroused 
 and within a short time turned into physical violence. 
 Within a year practically all of the Episcopal churches 
 closed their doors and many of the clergy sought refuge in 
 Canada or in seclusion; the incensed populace in many sec- 
 tions burned and destroyed much church property and in 
 some instances churchmen and priests were thrown into 
 prison. 
 
 In spite of all these difficulties the Church was still 
 strong in many respects. Its greatest strength perhaps lay 
 in the fact that many of the leading families belonged to 
 the Church and remained loyal to it. Washington and 
 Patrick Henry were devout Churchmen. Benjamin Frank- 
 lin, as far as he had any religion, was a Churchman and 
 was a member of the vestry of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 
 When the Revolution came to an end the Episcopal Church 
 was downcast but by no means destroyed and its reconstruc- 
 tion was at once begun. In 1784 the Rev. Dr. Seabury 
 went to England for consecration as a bishop, and being 
 refused on account of political objections, journeyed on to 
 Scotland and received his episcopate from the hands of the 
 non-juring bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The 
 Rev. Dr. White and the Rev. Dr. Provoost followed, and 
 in 1787 received their mitres in Lambeth Chapel. 
 
 At long last, with the necessary episcopal organization, 
 the Episcopal Church in America set about to reestablish 
 itself. At first differences arose over its organization, its 
 ritual, its creed, but finally guided by the wisdom of its 
 leaders complete unity of thought was obtained, and the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church came into being and started on 
 its way. However, the road that lay before it was by no 
 means clear of obstacles; the flavor of aristocracy and the 
 taint of Toryism which the Church indisputably had inher- 
 ited, could not be eliminated at once; in fact it was neces- 
 
20 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 sary for several decades to pass before this suspicion was 
 erased. 
 
 Rapid progress could not be expected at once while some 
 of the bishops displayed indifference towards the real 
 mission of the Church. Bishop Provoost of New York 
 resigned his episcopate to take up the study of botany; 
 Bishop Madison of Virginia for years neglected his diocese 
 for William and Mary College; Bishop White of Pennsyl- 
 vania showed only a little more interest; the new fields 
 which the nation was opening up were being sadly neg- 
 lected. It is related that the Rev. Dr. Gardiner of Trinity 
 Church, Boston, at one time the leading Episcopal clergy- 
 man in the eastern dioceses, when asked to contribute 
 towards the erection of an Episcopal church in a nearby 
 village, declined on the grounds that the Episcopal Church 
 was designed for ladies and gentlemen and that they did 
 not live in the country. Speaking of conditions in Boston 
 at about the middle of the nineteenth century, Bishop Phil- 
 lips Brooks said: "The Episcopal Church in Boston had still 
 a sort of foreign air. The taint of Toryism still clung about 
 it. It was an English importation. Its venerable rites were 
 curiosities. Its holy days were puzzling superstitions." 
 
 It is clear that the Episcopal Church had much to live 
 down and much to build up before progress could be made, 
 and this was especially true in the new states that were 
 being formed in the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 The men who were carving these new states out of the 
 wilderness came from the great common people. Their lives, 
 for the first generation at least, were to be marked by toil 
 and by sweat, rather than by the refinements of a highly 
 cultivated society. Religion was to be a part of their lives, 
 but the less elaborate forms of religion were more easily 
 accepted by the frontiermen; for this reason the Episcopal 
 Church was to make at first but slow progress in the West. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 21 
 
 The PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH in 
 ILLINOIS 
 
 While the wilderness was being conquered the life of 
 the backwoodsmen was only for the brave and the strong. 
 From 1800 to 1820 Illinois was no exception to this rule. 
 In A History of Illinois Thomas Ford gives us a vivid pic- 
 ture of the life of the times. The people were rough, and 
 more frequently than not, uncouth. Almost every man 
 drank daily large quantities of whisky; nor were the stand- 
 ards of morals what they are today. Religion did not play 
 an important part in the lives of the people; however along 
 with the first pioneers came men who preached the Word. 
 These early ministers of the Gospel were not trained in 
 theology and for the most part had only loose connections 
 with organized religion. Most of them, liberally supplied 
 with Wesley's tracts, had been inspired by their own con- 
 science to go forth in the name of the Lord; they brought 
 with them a simple type of religion which the backwoods- 
 men could understand; they traveled from hamlet to farm 
 house exhorting in a most forcible manner the settlers to 
 accept God. But if their manner was not conventional, or 
 their approach pleasing, nevertheless, it must be acknowl- 
 edged that these first ministers in Illinois served their pur- 
 pose well and that theirs was a noble effort. After the coun- 
 try became more settled and villages and towns were built, 
 these itinerant ministers could no longer supply the reli- 
 gious needs of the people; the more civilized society, which 
 began to develop after 1820, called for organized religion. 
 
 The Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Baptists and the 
 Roman Catholics established churches in Madison County 
 before 1830. Episcopalian missionaries attempted to do 
 the same. Under the heading "Official Correspondence" in 
 the April, 1837, issue of the Spirit of Missions it is recorded 
 
22 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 that an agent of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
 Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church was, for a short 
 time in 1823, in Illinois and established two stations there, 
 St. John's Church, Albion, and Trinity Church, Alton; but 
 as neither of these stations could obtain a priest, both 
 passed out of existence and eight years went by before 
 another missionary of the Church was sent to Illinois. 
 
 The first mention of Illinois that occurred in the Journal 
 of the General Convention was in the Journal of 1832. This 
 was a report of the Domestic Missionary Society and merely 
 stated that aid had been given to Illinois. There being no 
 General Convention held from 1832 to 1835, the next men- 
 tion of Illinois occurred in the Journal of 1835. 
 
 The April, 1837, issue of the Spirit of Missions further 
 recorded that the Rev. Mr. Corson, a missionary from Mis- 
 souri, visited Edwardsville and Jacksonville in 1831, and 
 shortly afterwards Jacksonville organized a parish and 
 made formal application for a priest; but it was not until 
 1833 that a missionary could be found who would go to 
 Illinois. In May, 1833, the Rev. John Batchelder arrived 
 in Jacksonville and thus became the first resident Episcopal 
 clergyman of Illinois, and for one and one-half years 
 remained the only one there. 
 
 In 1834 four missionaries were sent to Illinois, one for 
 Chicago, one for Galena, one for Peoria, and one to serve 
 both Beardstown and Rushville. It was these five mis- 
 sionaries and their laymen who formed the Primary Con- 
 vention of Illinois in 1835. 
 
 The 1835 issue of the Journal of the General Convention 
 recorded: 
 
 "The Diocese of Illinois was organized by a 
 Convention of Clergy and Lay Delegates, held in 
 Peoria, March 9, 1835. By this Convention, the 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 23 
 
 Rt. Rev. Philander Chase D.D. was unanimously 
 appointed to the Episcopate of the Diocese. It is 
 but a little more than two years since the introduc- 
 tion of worship and ordinances of our Church into 
 that State, and it is less than a year since there was 
 only a solitary clergyman in the whole of this 
 extensive and inviting field." 
 
 This same issue of the Journal further reported that the 
 clergy of the state consisted of the bishop, four presbyters 
 and two deacons; that one church had been built at Jack- 
 sonville, and that parishes had been established in Chicago, 
 Peoria, Galena, Rushville and Springfield. In this issue of 
 the Journal mention was made of the immense emigration 
 that was taking place in Illinois, or "the frontier of the far 
 West" as Illinois was referred to. 
 
 The RT. REV. PHILANDER CHASE, 
 BISHOP of ILLINOIS 
 
 While the emigrants were pushing their way westward 
 over the mountains and out into the hills and the valleys 
 of Ohio, the broad stretches of Indiana and of Illinois and 
 into the mountains of Kentucky and of Tennessee, the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church for the most part was stand- 
 ing still. The emigrants, many of whom were churchmen, 
 were calling for help, but the Church as an organization, 
 for years was indifferent to their calls. There were how- 
 ever a few fervent souls like Bishop Chase and Bishop Otey 
 who, actuated by their own conscience and with but little 
 financial aid from the Church, accompanied these emigrants 
 into the wilderness and helped set up the frontiers. 
 
 When Bishop Chase came to Illinois he was looked upon 
 as a veteran frontiersman. Twenty years before he had pio- 
 neered in the wilds of Ohio. Now he was to begin a simi- 
 
24 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 lar task in Illinois. In 1835 Illinois was no longer a wilder- 
 ness, but as a whole, the state was still very primitive, espe- 
 cially in the northern part where there were great stretches 
 of wild undeveloped land. It was in this section of Illinois 
 that the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in Illinois was 
 to begin his work. 
 
 The men who have ventured forth as missionaries, carry- 
 ing God's word to the outposts of civilization, have ever 
 been men of courage, men willing to endure trials and to 
 withstand hardships, heeding only the call of duty to divine 
 service. Such was the character of the Rt. Rev. Philander 
 Chase. Bishop Chase has been described as a man of great 
 physical endurance and power, self-willed, of iron deter- 
 mination, of tireless energy, industrious, an original geni- 
 ous, a devout Christian. 
 
 It falls to but few men to live a life so full and so event- 
 ful as that of Bishop Chase. Born of sturdy New England 
 stock in Cornish New Hampshire in 1775, the future Bishop 
 began his ecclesiastical labors in the western part of New 
 York State. Following his ordination as a deacon in St. 
 George's Chapel in the city of New York, he returned again 
 to western New York which at the time was little more 
 developed than was Illinois in 1835. In 1799 he was made 
 a priest. In 1805 Bishop Moore of New York sent him to 
 New Orleans to establish Christ Church which was the first 
 Episcopal church in the whole of the vast Territory of 
 Louisiana. Within six years the young clergyman was rec- 
 tor of prosperous Christ Church, in Hartford, Connecticut. 
 The years that Bishop Chase spent in Hartford were the 
 most peaceful of his entire life and there he might have 
 remained and rested in ease and comfort; but there was 
 something ever active in the restless soul of Bishop Chase 
 and while there in Hartford he felt an urge to go forth 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 25 
 
 into the then wilds of the State of Ohio to preach the 
 Divine Word. 
 
 The following ten years of his life in Ohio were filled 
 with romance and with hardships. We may glean an insight 
 of the ruggedness of the life of the people of Ohio at the 
 time Bishop Chase went to that state from a brief descrip- 
 tion which he gives in Reminiscences of a hurriedly pre- 
 pared meal for an unexpected visitor, "We had beefsteak, 
 chickens and pork roasted and boiled to our mind." Dur- 
 ing these years he was at work building a home for his 
 family, establishing parishes, riding hundreds of miles on 
 horse-back each year while visiting the scattered churches, 
 organizing the Diocese of Ohio which carried with it his 
 elevation to the episcopate, with the building of Kenyon 
 College with its tragic sequel, brought about by an unfor- 
 tunate misunderstanding which arose over his administra- 
 tion of the institution he had founded. 
 
 In 1831 Bishop Chase resigned the presidency of Kenyon 
 and also the bishopric of Ohio. All of his labors of these 
 the best years of his life had only made him, in his own 
 words, "a bishop without a see" and had sent him into exile 
 to the Territory of Michigan. But his indomitable will led 
 him on, and his blind faith in his motto "God will pro- 
 vide" sustained him. In the wilds of Michigan Territory 
 the dauntless Bishop again set about to build a home for 
 his family and to carry on the duties of his sacred office of 
 bishop, even though he had no established diocese. It was 
 while he was at work building his home on the banks of 
 the St. Joseph River in southern Michigan that, without his 
 knowledge or consent, the handful of clergymen in Illinois 
 elected him their bishop. When Bishop Chase received this 
 information he accepted it as a command and immediately 
 set about to visit his new diocese. 
 
 Again he must build a new home for his family; again 
 
26 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 new parishes must be established; but by now, all this was 
 no new experience for the Bishop, and with the same reso- 
 lution of old, Bishop Chase, in 1835, faced the future in 
 Illinois. Early in May, 1835, Bishop Chase left his home in 
 Michigan and set out for Illinois, arriving at Chicago later 
 that month. From Chicago he went to Peoria and from 
 there to Springfield and then to Jacksonville and back again 
 to Springfield. While in Springfield he was advised to 
 attend the General Convention which was to meet in 
 August at Philadelphia. Remaining in Illinois but a few 
 days longer, he now set out for Philadelphia by way of 
 Michigan, a detour which added some five hundred more 
 miles of travel. In view of the fact that considerable un- 
 pleasantness arose over his resignation of the bishopric of 
 Ohio, no doubt the old Bishop had some misgivings as he 
 approached the convention city. No challenge was made 
 Bishop Chase on the floor of the convention and he had the 
 pleasure of seeing both the new Diocese of Illinois and its 
 bishop received into full unity by the convention; he also 
 saw the convention appoint Bishop Kemper, whom the con- 
 vention had just made a bishop, Missionary Bishop of the 
 West, and grant him ample funds to organize his diocese on 
 the west side of the Mississippi; but for Illinois, equally 
 waste, no provision was made. 
 
 Bishop Chase realized that he would meet in Illinois the 
 same difficulty in obtaining priests for parishes that he had 
 experienced in Ohio. The passing out of existence, for 
 want of priests, of the stations of Trinity at Alton and of 
 St. John's at Albion, was evidence of this difficulty. Both 
 Bishop Chase and Bishop Kemper stoutly maintained that 
 the young priests must come from the native soil and that 
 colleges for the education of priests must be established in 
 the new states, if the Church were adequately to meet the 
 demands for religion in these states. No doubt soon after 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 27 
 
 he had accepted the bishopric of Illinois the thought came 
 to him of building a college in Illinois, just as he had done 
 in Ohio some ten years previously, but it was not until he 
 was at the convention in Philadelphia that he decided to 
 raise the funds for Illinois by the same procedure he had 
 raised the funds for Kenyon. It was in England where he 
 had raised the money for Kenyon; to England he would go 
 again, and immediately, leaving Illinois, during his absence, 
 in charge of Bishop Kemper. This second trip to England 
 in quest of funds was not so successful as his first trip. 
 When he arrived in England he found that many of his old 
 friends had died and that it was not easy to make new ones; 
 yet, in spite of handicaps, the old Bishop returned to Amer- 
 ica in the spring of 1836 with a respectable sum of money, 
 a sum sufficient to encourage him to make, with like pur- 
 pose, a tour of the New England States before starting back 
 towards Illinois. 
 
 In Reminiscences Bishop Chase quotes from a letter writ- 
 ten by his daughter, Mary Chase, which gives an interesting 
 picture of the family's departure from Gilead, the home 
 that they had built in Michigan: 
 
 "Our father arrived at Gilead upon the 28th day 
 of June, 1836. It was a day of rejoicing indeed; 
 all ordinary occupations were laid aside. . . . Dear 
 mother cried for joy. The 5th of July, Jane went 
 to prepare herself for the journey. The next day 
 our movables were sold, and B. returned from 
 Detroit, bringing with him an elegant span of 
 horses, and a good wagon, as a present from Mr. 
 C. C. Trowbridge to our father. 
 
 "At length the day arrived in which we should 
 leave our happy home, to go, we knew not 
 whither. The ox-team, driven by a hired hand, led 
 the van; the old carriage with the family came 
 
28 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 next; then H. with another wagon, and P., on old 
 Cincinnatus, brought up the rear." 
 
 In July or August Bishop Chase, accompanied by his fam- 
 ily, arrived in Peoria and soon after his arrival, purchased 
 a tract of land a few miles from the town and built a tem- 
 porary house using mostly sticks and mud for building 
 materials. This home he called the "Robin's Nest". 
 
 Early in the spring of 1837, as soon as the ice was out of 
 the Illinois River, he left Robin's Nest to start upon his 
 visitations. It is of interest to note that St. Paul's, Alton, 
 was his "first field of duty" as he reported his trip to the 
 Spirit of Missions. At Alton he found the Rev. James De 
 Pui who had been sent there in response to a request from 
 Bishop Kemper. 
 
 In 1837 Bishop Chase was no longer a young man; he 
 was sixty-two years old and growing corpulent; the strenu- 
 ous life he had led had begun to tell upon his physical 
 strength; his days for traveling on horseback were passed; 
 now he must make his visitations by steamboat, stage, or in 
 his Quaker coach. From 1830 to 1850 the greatest difficulty 
 facing the country was the problem of transportation. 
 There were practically no roads in many sections of the 
 country in 1835, and those that existed were mostly mud 
 roads which were impassable during many months of the 
 year. Steamboats plied the Mississippi and the larger Illi- 
 nois rivers, but horse-drawn vehicles were the real means 
 of travel. By 1840 stage lines were running between the 
 principal towns but this means of travel was always uncom- 
 fortable and unsatisfactory. Charles Dickens' description 
 of the mud holes in the streets of Belleville in 1842 is some 
 indication of what country roads in general were like in 
 Illinois at this time. In the spring of 1836 Bishop Kemper 
 was in Springfield and wished to go east into Indiana, but 
 as there were no stage lines running and the roads were 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 29 
 
 impassable he was forced to return to St. Louis and there 
 take a steamboat for Madison, Indiana, his destination. In 
 spite of these difficulties Bishop Kemper reported in the 
 August, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Missions that he had 
 traveled by land and water 740 miles in one week of March 
 of that year. In the April, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Mis- 
 sions is a letter from Bishop Kemper in which he wrote: 
 "The winter of 1836 was very severe. There were no stages 
 running. The rivers were full of ice . . . but why not go 
 on horseback? . . . for one ignorant of the country exposed 
 to snow storms on the prairies and to the dangerous neces- 
 sity of swimming creeks . . . besides the mire was so thick 
 in Illinois that frequently people cannot assemble for pub- 
 lic worship. ... I was advised, by the people who knew 
 the perils of travel, it would be unwise to go out." 
 
 As soon as Bishop Chase got his family settled in Robin's 
 Nest and his new diocese organized, he turned to the plan- 
 ning of his college. He selected a tract of beautiful rolling 
 ground near Robin's Nest for the site of the college which 
 he called "Jubilee," and for a period the work on the build- 
 ings occupied most of his time and consumed most of his 
 energies; but nothing could hold him still for long, for his 
 restless nature kept him constantly on the go. He no sooner 
 would return to Robin's Nest, dispose of his stacks of mail, 
 than he would be off again on his journeyings. There was 
 scarcely a year between 1839 and 1850 that Bishop Chase 
 did not visit the states along the Atlantic seaboard, to 
 attend the General Convention or in quest of funds for 
 Jubilee. By 1840 he had worn out his Quaker coach and 
 had bought a second carriage. This coach was evidently a 
 curious affair. The Bishop himself has said it was "a 
 vehicle, well-known throughout the neighborhood". It was 
 drawn by a team of fine horses and was large enough to 
 sleep in. In Reminiscences he tells of several occasions 
 
30 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 when he could not find suitable lodgings and was forced to 
 sleep in his wagon, as he sometimes referred to his coach. 
 It must have been a picturesque sight to see the Bishop 
 seated in this funny old conveyance, and not infrequently, 
 with the reins in his own hands, driving across the prairies. 
 On his visitations he might stop any place, put up at some 
 farm house, conduct services in some grove, in some barn, 
 in a vacant store, or in a private dwelling. In a report to 
 the Spirit of Missions he wrote: "Many times I have con- 
 ducted services in log cabins where light came only down 
 through the opening in the great chimney or through oiled 
 paper in the windows". In the accounts of these officia- 
 tions the Bishop has given us sufficient details to let us 
 know that on all such occasions, no matter how primitive 
 the surroundings may have been, the service was conducted 
 with stria regard for ritualistic detail. 
 
 The Journal of the General Convention of 1841 referred 
 to Jubilee as "an Institution of great promise". During the 
 lifetime of Bishop Chase, Jubilee was never large but it was 
 a successful college, and after his death, continued success- 
 fully for about fifteen years. But after Bishop Chase died, 
 Jubilee was never the same. The soul of Jubilee was gone. 
 After 1868, when the college failed to open, several 
 attempts were made to reopen it, but all failed. In 1883 
 the Rev. Thomas W. Haskins, once rector of St. Paul's, 
 Alton, was inspired by reading Reminiscences to such an 
 extent that he was moved to reopen Jubilee. The effort, 
 however, was unsuccessful and as the years rolled by, the 
 college buildings fell into a state of ruin. Today the 
 grounds are owned by the state and the buildings have been 
 designated as historic monuments. 
 
 In 1843 Bishop Chase was elected Presiding Bishop of 
 the American House of Bishops, an office which he held 
 until his death. In 1844, sixty-nine years of age, his 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 31 
 
 strength beginning to give away, with evidence of weari- 
 ness, the ailing Bishop reported to the General Convention 
 that he had traveled twelve hundred miles that year. From 
 then on he rapidly failed in health; yet regardless of the 
 hardships of travel of that day, he continued on and on; 
 he seemed to know no fatigue, to know no rest. 
 
 All of the portraits of Bishop Chase show him to have 
 been a very handsome, indeed, a magnificent looking man. 
 He was six feet three inches tall and of great frame. His 
 appearance was commanding and arresting. It was said 
 that when he stood in an ordinary doorway, he seemed to 
 fill up all of the space. His wonderfully refined, kindly 
 face, with its clear cut features as shown in his portraits, 
 bespeaks the character of the man. He was a most pic- 
 turesque sight, especially towards the end of his life, walk- 
 ing along the streets, carrying his thick heavy gold-headed 
 cane, his English clergyman's cap on his head, wrapped in 
 his great loose cape. 
 
 During the last years of his life the old Bishop delivered 
 his sermons seated, propped up in the pulpit with cushions; 
 but there was no lessening of the thunder in his beautiful 
 but powerful voice, nor in his heroic faith. In 1852, while 
 driving over the campus of Jubilee College, he was thrown 
 from his carriage and sustained injuries from which he 
 never recovered. On September 20, 1852, at his home near 
 his beloved Jubilee, surrounded by his family and his 
 friends, he very peacefully passed away. 
 
 Amongst the Illinois State Historical Society's published 
 papers, is a most carefully and tenderly prepared essay on 
 Jubilee and Bishop Chase by Lorene Martin which describes 
 Jubilee today: 
 
 "its ivy-draped walls slowly mellowed to a soft 
 warm gray have reverted to the wild natural 
 beauty of the surrounding country-side." 
 
32 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 and in the old abandoned graveyard of the college which 
 the Bishop himself laid out, 
 
 "three tall firs, within a small inclosure, now lift 
 their green against a blue sky, and together with a 
 marble monument, in the semblance of an Epis- 
 copal altar, with an open Bible of marble lying 
 upon it, mark the lovely sylvan resting place of 
 The First Bishop of Ohio and of Illinois, for nine 
 years the Presiding Bishop of The American 
 House of Bishops, the founder of Kenyon and 
 Jubilee Colleges." 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH in the TOWN of ALTON 
 
 1836 
 
 The station of Trinity established in Alton in 1823 died 
 along with the first settlement there, sometime before 1829. 
 At the Primary Convention in Peoria in 1835, the Rev. John 
 Batchelder of Jacksonville reported: "I have recently been 
 informed that it is the desire of friends of the Church in 
 Springfield and in Alton to organize parishes and to secure 
 clergymen." 
 
 Bishop Chase in Reminiscences quotes from a letter that 
 he wrote from Jacksonville in 1835, during his first trip to 
 Illinois, to his wife in Michigan: 
 
 "Dr. H., in his letter, urges me to return to 
 Springfield, and not continue my journey any fur- 
 ther to the south this summer, on the ground that 
 the cholera has broken out with renewed violence 
 in Alton, the chief place whose interests call for 
 my attention." 
 
 The second convention of the Diocese of Illinois was 
 held in Jacksonville in May, 1836, and was presided over 
 by Bishop Kemper. Bishop Chase was in England from 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 33 
 
 the fall of 1835 until late spring of 1836 and did not return 
 to Illinois until July or August of that year. At the Gen- 
 eral Convention in Philadelphia Bishop Kemper had been 
 requested by Bishop Chase to take charge of Illinois during 
 the latter 's absence. At the Diocesan Convention in 1836 
 the Rev. Joseph L. Darrow reported that he had arrived in 
 Illinois in August, 1835, and had preached his Christmas 
 1835 sermon in Alton. The Rev. Mr. Darrow had, at the 
 request of Bishop Kemper, been made a missionary priest 
 to serve Madison and St. Clair counties and was stationed 
 at Collinsville. In the July, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Mis- 
 sions, there is a letter from the Rev. Mr. Darrow, dated 
 Collinsville, April 15, 1836, in which he wrote: 
 
 "One Sunday I preached in Alton, but for want 
 of a house I could officiate only once." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Darrow was said to have been a physician 
 as well as a priest and helped support himself by rendering 
 professional medical services at which he was quite success- 
 ful. He is described as a quiet, genial, courteous man, 
 especially kind to children. It is said that he cured many 
 people apparently dying of cholera and in 1855 he suc- 
 cumbed to the disease himself. From all accounts, the Rev. 
 Mr. Darrow was faithful to his trusts. 
 
 The prominence that Alton had attained from 1830 to 
 1835 had attracted the attention of Bishop Chase in 1835, 
 and quite naturally that of Bishop Kemper from his see 
 just across the river, as is shown by his letters to the Spirit 
 of Missions. In the April, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Mis- 
 sions there is a letter from Bishop Kemper, dated St. Louis, 
 Mo., March 3, 1836, in which he wrote: 
 
 "I have lately spent a few days in Alton. The 
 prospects there are of the most gratifying nature. 
 On Saturday night, 20th Feb., having received a 
 
34 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 few days before a copy of the Constitution, etc., 
 used in organizing churches in Pennsylvania, I 
 presided at a meeting when the Episcopalians of 
 the place organized 'St. Paul's Church in the town 
 of Alton', and elected ten vestrymen. On Sunday 
 I officiated in the morning at the Baptist Church, 
 and in the afternoon in the Presbyterian to large 
 congregations, many of whom united in the serv- 
 ice." 
 
 The only known list of the members of the first vestry of 
 St. Paul's Church is that to be found in A Gazetteer of 
 Madison County by J. T. Haire, published in 1866. The 
 following names are listed: 
 
 John Bailhache Henry Tanner 
 Charles Trumbull Amos B. Roff 
 Kimbell J. W. Chickering 
 
 In the August, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Missions there 
 is a letter from Bishop Kemper, dated Springfield, May 21, 
 1836, in which he states that the Rev. James De Pui had 
 recently been appointed to serve both Rushville and Beards- 
 town and that he was expected to attend the Diocesan Con- 
 vention at Jacksonville, but failed to arrive in time. Evi- 
 dently the Rev. Mr. De Pui scarcely more than reported at 
 Beardstown or Rushville, for in July, we find him at Alton. 
 
 It will be observed that Bishop Kemper, as well as 
 Bishop Chase, was something of a traveler, and that he had 
 taken seriously the trust imposed on him to look after 
 Illinois during Bishop Chase's absence while in England. 
 It will be noted that Bishop Kemper was in 1836, in Feb- 
 ruary at Alton; in March at Springfield, and that same 
 month went to Madison, Indiana, by way of St. Louis, hav- 
 ing traveled 740 miles in one week by land and water; in 
 May he presided over the Diocesan Convention at Jackson- 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 35 
 
 ville, and on the 21st day of May he was again in Spring- 
 field. 
 
 REV. JAMES De PUI 
 
 1836 
 
 At the third Diocesan Convention held in Chicago in 
 1837, the Rev. Mr. De Pui reported that he had taken 
 charge of St. Paul's, Alton, in July, 1836. In the Decem- 
 ber, 1836, issue of the Spirit of Missions there is a letter 
 from the Rev. Mr. James De Pui, dated Alton, August 16, 
 1836, in which he reported that St. Paul's Church had raised 
 in subscriptions, between $3,000 and $4,000 for a church, 
 held an option on a good lot and hoped to build soon. He 
 further stated that the church had fitted up a small store 
 room which held about one hundred people and that it was 
 the only place in the town to be had. The same issue of 
 the Spirit of Missions reprinted an announcement of the 
 vestry of St. Paul's, dated October, 1836, which stated that 
 the Vestry had authority to purchase a lot at $4,000 and to 
 make a loan of $5,000 for a building. At the Diocesan 
 Convention in 1837, Bishop Chase reported that Judge 
 Hawley of Alton had presented the vestry of St. Paul's with 
 a lot for the proposed new church. These announcements 
 indicate rapid action for a parish that had just been formed, 
 and likewise vividly illustrate the amazingly progressive 
 spirit of Alton in 1836. 
 
 The October, 1837, issue of the Spirit of Missions con- 
 tains a letter from the Rev. Mr. De Pui, dated Alton, June 
 7, 1837, in which he states that St. Paul's Church had rented 
 a building, lately used by the Baptists, which contained 
 thirty or forty pews, at a rental of $400 a year; that the 
 excavation for the new church was made but, on account of 
 the times, the project had been temporarily abandoned; that 
 the ladies of the parish had raised $800 by means of a fair. 
 
36 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 At this time St. Paul's had twenty-seven communicants in 
 the church; the Sunday School had fifty children and seven 
 teachers. 
 
 This letter of the Rev. Mr. De Pui is of interest on 
 account of its reference to the times. In June, 1837, trou- 
 ble was brewing for Lovejoy, and that spring the bubble of 
 speculation in real estate had burst and, besides, all of the 
 banks in the United States had stopped payments. Clearly 
 1837 was not a year for St. Paul's to begin the building of 
 a new church. 
 
 The last letter of the Rev. Mr. De Pui, written from 
 Alton, appeared in the March, 1838, issue of the Spirit of 
 Missions. It was dated December 22, 1837. In this letter 
 he wrote discouragingly of the future of St. Paul's and of 
 Alton, stating that the congregation had been changing its 
 place of worship so frequently that the parish could not 
 progress. He further stated that Alton had for several 
 months (he was writing after the death of Lovejoy) been 
 in such a state of excitement that the people were not in a 
 frame of mind "to listen to reason, to religion or to any- 
 thing of a sober nature." He referred to the fact that when 
 the excitement over Lovejoy first began, he had preached a 
 sermon on the necessity of maintaining law and order, and 
 that the sermon had been printed in pamphlet form. 
 
 It is to be regretted, however, that the first rector of 
 St. Paul's did not recognize the great principles that Love- 
 joy stood for and take his stand at the martyr's side. But 
 the honor of St. Paul's was well maintained at the crucial 
 hour, for in that brave, yea, almost immortal little band of 
 men that stood guard over Lovejoy's press, on the night of 
 November 7, 1837, were two members of St. Paul's Parish, 
 Henry Tanner and Amos B. Roff. The Rev. Mr. De Pui, 
 as a minister, did not stand alone in his position, for of all 
 the ministers of the Gospel in Alton in 1837, only the 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 37 
 
 Rev. Frank Graves of the First Presbyterian Church stood 
 by Lovejoy to the end. 
 
 In the November, 1838, issue of the Spirit of Missions 
 the Rev. Mr. De Pui reported that, with the consent of 
 Bishop Chase, he left Alton in July, 1838, and went to 
 Dixonville. 
 
 MR. OWEN LOVEJOY 
 
 1838 
 
 In the various histories of St. Paul's Church, Mr. Owen 
 Lovejoy is mentioned as having served as lay reader at 
 St. Paul's. There is no mention in the Journal of the Dio- 
 cese of Illinois of this as being a fact; but it is probable 
 that he did so serve. In the fall of 1837 and the winter and 
 the spring of 1838, the Rev. Mr. De Pui was in poor health, 
 suffering from chills and fever, ailments that were very 
 prevalent in Alton during the early days. Mr. Owen Love- 
 joy, who had been working in Alton with his brother Elijah 
 P. Lovejoy, undoubtedly was left downcast and at sea after 
 the death of his martyred brother; and no doubt these two 
 men, the Rev. Mr. De Pui and Owen Lovejoy, both in a 
 mutual state of mind, were drawn to each other in the late 
 fall of 1837; and through the Rev. Mr. De Pui's influence, 
 Mr. Lovejoy became interested in the work of the Episcopal 
 Church. The records of the Diocesan Convention held at 
 Rushville in June, 1838, state that the Rev. Mr. De Pui 
 "appeared and took his seat". Mr. Owen Lovejoy was 
 listed as a duly accredited lay delegate to this convention. 
 
 The Journal of this convention records: "On June 5th, 
 they signed the usual testimonials in favor of admission of 
 Mr. Owen Lovejoy to the Holy Order of Deacons." But 
 this step was as far as he went, for in his address to the 
 Diocesan Convention in 1839 at Chicago, Bishop Chase 
 said: "Immediately after the rising of the Rushville Con- 
 
38 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 vention I went to Beardstown; the next morning I went to 
 Springfield, and the following Sunday I was at Jackson- 
 ville. Here I expected to ordain, by dispensation, a candi- 
 date for Holy Orders, but something occurred, which, in 
 my judgment, required deliberation and advice of my 
 Brethren, the Bishops. I deferred, and in the meantime, 
 the candidate, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, requested that his name 
 be taken from the list of candidates and this I accordingly 
 did." 
 
 Late in September, 1838, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, traveling on 
 horseback, came to a fork in the road as he was nearing the 
 town of Princeton. Being undecided whether to enter the 
 town, or to go on, he allowed his horse to make the deci- 
 sion. The horse chose the road that led to the town. The 
 minister, the Rev. Lucian Farnham of the Hampshire Col- 
 ony Congregational Church of Princeton, was at that time 
 on sick-leave and the church, anxious for a leader, requested 
 Mr. Lovejoy to serve for one year. In October, 1839, Mr. 
 Lovejoy was requested to become the permanent pastor of 
 the church, but as he had not yet been ordained, it was 
 necessary to hold a special meeting to ordain him. At this 
 special council held in Princeton, Mr. Lovejoy was exam- 
 ined and found worthy of ordination. 
 
 It is interesting to note that he presented to this council 
 his certificate of regular standing as a licentiate of the Alton 
 Presbytery. The Rev. Mr. Lovejoy remained in Prince- 
 ton as minister of the Hampshire Colony Congregational 
 Church for seventeen years. Early in his life he consecrated 
 himself to the great cause for which his brother had died 
 and after giving up the ministry, he entered politics and 
 was sent to Congress where he became an outstanding and 
 intrepid opponent of slavery. 
 
 1838 
 
 The Spirit of Missions reported Alton vacant in 1838. 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 39 
 
 REV. A. B. BLEDSOE 
 
 1839 
 
 Harriett Dolbee in a short history of St. Paul's, and 
 Haire, in his gazetteer state that the Rev. A. B. Bledsoe 
 served St. Paul's for six months in 1839. However, there 
 is no mention of this fact in the Journal of the Diocese of 
 Illinois, nor in the Spirit of Missions. In the July, 1840, 
 issue of the Spirit of Missions, Bishop Chase reported that 
 Alton had been vacant during 1839. The 1839 Journal of 
 the Diocese of Illinois also reported Alton vacant. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM DOUGLAS 
 
 1839 
 
 It is clear that Mr. Owen Lovejoy was never more than a 
 lay reader at St. Paul's, if that, during the winter of 1837 
 and the spring of 1838; and that after the Diocesan Con- 
 vention at Rushville in June, 1838, he completely severed 
 his connections with the Episcopal Church. From July, 
 
 1838, when the Rev. James De Pui left Alton, until Decem- 
 ber, 1839, when the Rev. William Douglas arrived, the 
 official records indicate that St. Paul's was without a rec- 
 tor. In the March, 1840, issue of the Spirit of Missions, 
 there is a letter from the Rev. William Douglas in which 
 he states: "I arrived in Alton on Sunday, December 22nd, 
 
 1839. The Vestry has hired a room and furnished it with 
 a reading desk and a chancel, around the rails of which on 
 Christmas Day came sixteen." The Rev. William Douglas 
 did not remain long in Alton, probably not more than six 
 months. 
 
 The absence of any mention of Alton in the Journals, or 
 the Spirit of Missions from 1840 to 1844 indicates that St. 
 Paul's was without a priest during these years. 
 
40 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 REV. THOMAS S. BRITTON 
 
 1844 
 
 The Spirit of Missions issued a report for the year ending 
 April 1, 1945. This report stated that the Rev. Thomas S. 
 Britton on May 12, 1844, was stationed at St. Paul's, Alton. 
 The Rev. Mr. Britton, however, did not remain long, prob- 
 ably less than a year; but at least he remained long enough 
 to make a report for part of the year 1845. His report is 
 published in the journal of the Diocese of Illinois. 
 
 The VESTRY of ST. PAUL'S buys the 
 GODFREY CHURCH 
 
 1845 
 
 When Captain Godfrey built his church on the corner of 
 Third and Market Street, he intended it to be used by all 
 religious bodies in the town that did not have a permanent 
 building of their own. The Baptists used the building for 
 a short time, and the congregation of St. Paul's occasionally 
 held its services there. The First Presbyterian Church, of 
 which Captain Godfrey was a member, as soon as the build- 
 ing was finished, held all of its services there, and from the 
 very beginning the church became known as the Presby- 
 terian Church. There was no real reason for the building 
 to have been called the Presbyterian Church, inasmuch as, 
 the building at no time belonged to the First Presbyterian 
 Church, and under the circumstances, was never the Pres- 
 byterian Church. 
 
 Bishop Kemper in his letter in the Spirit of Missions 
 states that he held services in the Presbyterian Church; but 
 it is evident that St. Paul's congregation after that did not 
 make much use of the privilege granted by Captain God- 
 frey. Gilman in Life on the hakes states that during his 
 visit to Alton in 1836, one Sunday afternoon he attended 
 services in the court house conducted by an Episcopal cler- 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 41 
 
 gyman; and it will be recalled that the Rev. James De Pui 
 and the Rev. William Douglas refer only to "store rooms" 
 as the places where they held services. 
 
 The exact date when Captain Godfrey built his church 
 is not known, but most accounts give 1834 as the year. The 
 records of the First Presbyterian Church show that both 
 Captain Godfrey and his partner, Mr. Winthrop S. Gilman 
 joined the church in 1833; but there is no mention in these 
 records of the building. The records of the original deeds 
 to the site as acquired by Capt. Godfrey are still on file in 
 the court house in Edwardsville. 
 
 The site of St. Paul's Church, as originally laid out by 
 Rufus Easton, consisted of two lots facing on Market Street 
 which ran back to the east for a distance of sixty feet. 
 These lots are in Section 13 of the original plat of Alton. 
 The corner lot is numbered No. 1 and the lot to the north 
 is numbered No. 2. On September 24, 1833, Capt. Godfrey 
 acquired from William Russell lot No. 2 for the sum of 
 fifty dollars. On November 29, 1833, he bought from John 
 Manning for two hundred and fifty dollars lot No. 1. As 
 Capt. Godfrey desired to face his building towards the 
 river, he had in lot No. 1, the corner lot, a frontage of 
 sixty feet which permitted him to face the building on 
 Third Street and to build back covering both lots. Since he 
 acquired the site so late in the fall of 1833, in all probabil- 
 ity he did not begin building operations until some time in 
 the spring of 1834. 
 
 It is of interest to note that the deeds to both of these 
 lots contain the clause: 
 
 "with this special and positive limitation, to wit: 
 the owner or owners of said lot, or any part there- 
 of shall never keep, nor attempt to keep, nor per- 
 mit to be kept, any public ferry, from or in sight 
 
42 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 of said lot, which would run across the Missis- 
 sippi River from said town of Alton." 
 
 This same clause is incorporated in all of the deeds to 
 the lots in the original town of Alton as laid out by Rufus 
 Easton, and, as is obvious, was a restriction imposed by 
 Mr. Easton upon all purchasers of lots in the new town, 
 in order to gi\e him, as the owner of Fountain's Ferry, a 
 monopoly on the ferry business. 
 
 In 1836 Captain Godfrey began the erection of the first 
 building for Monticello Seminary. In 1838 the building 
 was completed and opened for students. About this time 
 Captain Godfrey deeded his church in Alton to the sem- 
 inary. Within a a few years the seminary was in need of 
 funds, and having no use for a church building in the town 
 of Alton, offered it for sale, naturally expecting that the 
 First Presbyterian Church would purchase it. After waiting 
 more than a year for the Presbyterians to make up their 
 minds, Captain Godfrey, acting for the seminary, offered 
 the building to the vestry of St. Paul's for the sum of two 
 thousand dollars. This offer was quickly accepted, and 
 when the sale was announced, the news was somewhat of a 
 surprise to the congregation of the First Presbyterian 
 Church. Captain Godfrey was at once severely criticized 
 for making the sale; but he was able to show that he had 
 first offered the building to the Presbyterians and by their 
 refusal to purchase it, he was justified in dealing with the 
 vestry of St. Paul's. At all events St. Paul's Parish acquired 
 the Godfrey Church, and on April 27, 1845, the Presby- 
 terians held their last service in the building. 
 
 The Journals of the Diocesan Convention and of the 
 General Convention and the Spirit of Missions, after April, 
 1845, do not mention Alton again, until June, 1846. The 
 absence of reports from St. Paul's for this period indi- 
 cates that no priest was stationed there; this assumption is 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 43 
 
 borne out in the first report that the Rev. Dr. McMasters 
 made, after coming to Alton, to the Society of Domestic 
 and Foreign Missions. 
 
 It was a most extraordinary circumstance for St. Paul's 
 Parish, in 1845, to raise two thousand dollars to purchase a 
 building. The parish had been struggling to exist for the 
 past nine years, and it had no rector at the time of the pur- 
 chase. This transaction is evidence that a few faithful 
 souls, some of whom evidently were substantial members, 
 had tenaciously held their faith in St. Paul's. The money 
 for the church was raised in about one year's time, for 
 Bishop Chase, in his report to the Diocesan Convention, in 
 1846, reported that he could have consecrated the church 
 that year, but due to the fact that the parish had been so 
 long without a rector, he desired to wait another year. 
 
 Some accounts state that the purchase price was two 
 thousand dollars while others state it to have been eighteen 
 hundred dollars. This discrepancy in figures can probably 
 be explained by a reported refund of two hundred dollars 
 having later been made to the vestry of St. Paul's upon the 
 return of the church bell to the Presbyterians. The bell had 
 been given to the First Presbyterian Church by the mother 
 of Mr. Winthrop S. Gilman. The Presbyterians with con- 
 siderable justice contended that the bell was not actually 
 attached to the building, that it was their personal prop- 
 erty and was not included in the sale of the real estate. The 
 Episcopalians contended otherwise. While the matter was 
 being argued, a number of Presbytreians went to the church 
 one night, lowered the bell and hauled it away. The Rev. 
 August T. Norton, in his History of the Presbyterian 
 Church in Illinois states: "that bell decended from the 
 tower early one morning." At any rate, this same bell 
 hangs today in the tower of the First Presbyterian Church 
 at Fourth and Alby Street. 
 
44 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 This bell has played its part in the history of Alton. It 
 is described in some of the old gazetteers of Alton as hav- 
 ing a very pleasing, clear tone. Mr. Winthrop S. Gilman 
 in 1881, writing his recollections of the early years of the 
 First Presbyterian Church, tells of the many revival meet- 
 ings that took place in the old church and of the many con- 
 versions that were accomplished there. He relates, in ref- 
 erence to the bell, that one day an old sinner was playing 
 cards in the wood near by when the bell began to toll. The 
 plaintive tones of the bell were more than the old sinner 
 could stand. He threw down his cards and came in to gi\e 
 himself up to God, crying that the bell had a voice that he 
 could not resist. It was this bell that was rung on June 7, 
 1837, at the noisy welcome all Alton gave to Daniel Web- 
 ster; and it was rung again on that fateful night of Novem- 
 ber 7, 1937, when Lovejoy was killed. A recent inspection 
 of this bell discloses the fact that the bell is 27 inches in 
 diameter, 36 inches high, and weighs 1100 pounds. The 
 bell was cast in Louisville, Kentucky by the Kayes Bell 
 Foundry and has evidence of very careful workmanship in 
 several ornamental bands cast on the bell and made up of 
 classic figures interspersed with bird forms. 
 
 It is unfortunate that no photographs of the first St. 
 Paul's, the church that Capt. Godfrey built, can be found. 
 There are however brief descriptions of the old building to 
 be found in gazetteers by John Mason Peck and by J. T. 
 Haire. Gilman in Life on the hakes describes the building; 
 Gen. Lewis B. Parker and Mr. Edward P. Wade have left 
 descriptions of it. Besides these descriptions, there ate in 
 existence lithographs showing panoramic views of Alton in 
 which the first St. Paul's appears. The Hayner Library 
 owns a fine oil painting of the city of Alton in which the 
 church is readily recognized. 
 
 Both Peck and Haire state in their gazetteers that the 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 45 
 
 church was built of stone and that it had a beautiful grace- 
 ful steeple. They also state that the church had a basemenf 
 Sunday School room. In the September 6th, 1855, issue of 
 the Alton Weekly Courier, the Rev. Dr. McMasters, rector 
 of St. Paul's, announced that the Select School which would 
 be conducted by Mr. J. F. Underwood of Vermont, would 
 open on the second Monday of September and that the 
 school would be held in the basement of St. Paul's Church. 
 This statement helps to establish the fact that the building 
 stood high out of the ground and must have had basement 
 windows of reasonable size. Haire in his gazetteer, records 
 a most significant statement which is invaluable in deter- 
 mining just what took place when the present building 
 was built in 1856. Haire tells us that the dimensions of the 
 Godfrey church were about 45 feet for the width and 60 
 feet for the length. 
 
 Gilman described the church as: 
 
 "A neat stone building, standing on high ground 
 at a short distance from and in full view of the 
 river. It forms a pleasing feature in the land- 
 scape and gives it a character which cannot fail to 
 gladden the eye of the Christian beholder." 
 
 In a paper prepared for the semi-centennial of the First 
 Presbyterian Church of Alton, held in 1881, Gen. Parker 
 wrote: 
 
 "It was no common structure. Its exterior and 
 its interior bore no tame aspect. The young 
 Angelo who planned it, was doubtless resolved to 
 achieve success or splendid failure, and succeeded 
 — in the latter. Cold, hard and forbidding, its stiff 
 high-backed pews, its pea green walls, whoever 
 saw it can ever forget or desire to see it repeated? 
 The place and its surroundings failing to inspire 
 
46 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 pious feeling in the devout, would scarcely awaken 
 holy aspirations in even loyal Presbyterians. But 
 severely plain as it undoubtedly was, within its 
 walls, at one time or another, were gathered many 
 choice spirits and the intellectual character of the 
 congregation was unsurpassed, if equaled, in any 
 frontier settlement." 
 
 Gen. Parker while intending to lampoon the old edifice, 
 has here, in fact, left us a vivid picture of a splendid 
 Colonial building which the 1880's failed to appreciate. 
 The quaintness of this description and the comments on the 
 congregation help to fill out the picture of the first decade 
 in the life of Alton. 
 
 Mr. Edward P. Wade wrote a brief description of the old 
 church for the dedication in 1898 of the present First Pres- 
 byterian Church. This description of Mr. Wade's states: 
 
 "The church had a basement fit for a Sunday 
 School which was held there. The building stood 
 considerably higher than the present building. 
 Steps led up to the front and only entrance. To 
 the left on entering the Vestibule, was a little 
 room for lamps, oil and so forth, while on the 
 right was a door opening on a stairway which led 
 to the Singers' Gallery over the Vestibule. A bell 
 had been given by the mother of Mr. Winthrop S. 
 Gilman and a rope which rang the bell passed 
 down through the gallery floor to the foot of the 
 stairs." 
 
 A forgotten author has described the interior of the 
 church: 
 
 "the open rafters were painted blue, and there 
 were many knot holes, which upon a stretch of 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 41 
 
 the imagination would appear as stars in the firma- 
 ment." 
 
 The lithographic views of Alton show the first St. Paul's 
 to be a Colonial building. In these cuts the individual 
 buildings are very small and very little detail of the archi- 
 tecture is shown, and what detail is shown, is not very accu- 
 rately drawn. For this reason, these cuts are of little value 
 in determining the shape of the windows, especially the 
 heads of the windows; but they serve very well to tell the 
 general type and the style of the buildings. 
 
 The oil painting of Alton in the Hayner Library is 
 signed, "Blair Ripley 1846." It is a view of the town taken 
 from across the river. In this painting, St. Paul's Church 
 is well drawn with most of the architectural details accu- 
 rately indicated. The painting is the work of a skillful 
 artist who has caught, to a remarkable degree, the flavor 
 and the character of the scene. Here may be seen the Alton 
 of those first romantic years. Here is depicted all the color 
 and the charm and the picturesqueness of the buildings of 
 that era. Here may be seen the row of warehouses, the 
 grim gray walls of the old penitentiary and, most promi- 
 nently, in full view of the river stands out St. Paul's 
 Church. The evidence of technical skill and the faithful 
 drawing of the scene, justifies the assumption that the 
 painter has created an accurate picture of the church. This 
 painting distinctly shows the church was designed in the 
 Colonial style of architecture, and that the building in plan 
 was a simple rectangle with a low gable roof. At the front 
 and in the center was a graceful steeple of frame construc- 
 tion. This steeple was stepped off as it went up in three 
 sections each enhanced with architectural details such as are 
 common to steeples of New England meeting houses, and 
 finished with a slender spire resting on a delicate, octagonal 
 base of open arches. The first floor of the church was 
 
48 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 raised up about six feet above the grade. At the front, two 
 short flights of steps led up to the door in the center, on 
 either side of which was a window. The front ended at the 
 top with a low gable in the center of which was a fan win- 
 dow. There are three windows shown on the side of the 
 church, but due to the perspective in the picture, these win- 
 dows are so narrow that it is impossible to tell if the 
 painter intended to indicate square, or round headed win- 
 dows. This painting does not show any basement windows, 
 and this is singular in view of the accuracy of most of the 
 drawing. 
 
 In view of the fact that all of the descriptions and all of 
 the drawings agree in depicting a Colonial building; and 
 also that all of the buildings that Capt. Godfrey built in 
 and around Alton were in the Colonial style of architecture, 
 it is, therefore, scarcely an assumption to say that the first 
 St. Paul's was a Colonial building. Judged from these 
 drawings and from these descriptions, the first St. Paul's 
 was a very beautiful little building. It stood majestically, 
 high up on Market Street hill, a conspicuous feature on the 
 pleasing landscape that Alton, viewed from the river boats, 
 presented in the early days. In addition to being used as a 
 place of worship, it served as a general meeting place for 
 public gatherings. Here many distinguished ministers of 
 the Gospel and leading statesmen spoke. In 1856, after 
 almost a quarter of a century of public service, when the 
 old building gave way to a larger and a finer structure, it 
 was, no doubt, out of reverence for the old walls and for 
 the memories of the past quite as much as for practical and 
 economic reasons that a considerable portion of the old 
 structure was retained. 
 
 The January, 1847, issue of the Spirit of Missions con- 
 tains a letter from the Rev. R. J. Walker in which he 
 states: "On June 29, 1846, I met Bishop Chase in Alton 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 49 
 
 where we stayed ten days trying to collect the scattered 
 remnants of a once flourishing congregation, but being 
 unsuccessful, with heavy hearts we left." In July of the 
 same year, the Rev. Mr. Walker returned to Alton to sup- 
 ply for a short period. Of his stay there he wrote to the 
 Spirit of Missions: "We opened the church only five times." 
 He continued to tell in his report that while at St. Paul's 
 he met an old parishioner who was about ready to die and 
 who plaintively inquired what chance St. Paul's had of 
 obtaining a rector for he was afraid he would die and there 
 would be no priest to bury him. 
 
 REV. DR. S. Y. McMASTERS 
 
 1846 
 
 The September, 1847, issue of the Spirit of Missions con- 
 tains a letter from the Rev. Dr. S. Y. McMasters (written 
 some time after April, 1847) in which he states that he 
 came to Alton on November 26, 1846. He found the con- 
 gregation so scattered that it hardly knew it existed; it had 
 failed so often in the past that had it not been for a few 
 faithful souls the parish would have ceased to exist. The 
 Rev. Dr. McMasters points out in his letter, that in the 
 eleven years that had passed since the station was founded, 
 the total time that it had been supplied with a resident 
 priest was less than three years. He also wrote that the 
 congregation had a comfortable church but it was not yet 
 paid for in full. It will be noted that this statement does 
 not agree with the report of Bishop Chase to the 1846 Dio- 
 cesan Convention. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. McMasters was just the man that St. Paul's 
 needed. His reports to the Spirit of Missions show his 
 great success from the very beginning of his rectorship. 
 Under his leadership the congregation was again brought 
 together and began to increase rapidly. On the 21st and 
 
50 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 the 22nd of June, 1847, the eleventh annual convention of 
 the Diocese of Illinois was held in Alton. Alton was evi- 
 dently selected as the convention city in recognition of the 
 good work that the Rev. Dr. McMasters had done in the 
 short time he had been in Alton. At this convention, the 
 charter for Jubilee College, which Bishop Chase had been 
 working for and which had finally been granted by the 
 State Legislature, was ratified. In 1847 Bishop Chase was 
 growing feeble and felt the need of an assistant to help in 
 the work of the diocese. At this convention the Rev. 
 James Britton was elected assistant bishop; however at the 
 next General Convention, the Rev. Mr. Britton failed to 
 receive the convention's approval. This approval was not 
 refused on account of any personal objections to the Rev. 
 Mr. Britton; it was largely due to general disagreements 
 that developed between the church parties which existed at 
 the time. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. McMasters built up the church within a 
 year and a half so that it was able to clear itself of debt. 
 On July 4, 1848, Bishop Chase consecrated the first St. 
 Paul's Church. The bell having been taken by the Presby- 
 terians, St. Paul's in April, 1849, purchased a new bell from 
 A. Fulton and Company of Pittsburgh, Pa. This was said 
 to have been an exceptionally fine bell with a fine clear 
 tone. This bell was hung in the tower of the new church 
 in 1856, and was there until it fell and was broken in the 
 tornado of June, I860. 
 
 In 1849 Alton experienced a severe epidemic of cholera 
 during which many deaths occurred. The disease was par- 
 ticularly ravishing to the inmates of the old penitentiary. 
 The Rev. Dr. McMasters who was serving as chaplain of 
 the prison as well as rector of St. Paul's, together with 
 members of the congregation of St. Paul's, performed 
 heroic work amongst the unfortunate prisoners at this time. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 51 
 
 The congregation of St. Paul's lost many of its members in 
 this epidemic and was reduced to only thirty-five communi- 
 cants. In 1850 the Rev. Dr. McMasters reported to the 
 Spirit of Missions that the parish could not support itself. 
 
 Sometime during the fall of 1851 or the spring of 1852 
 the Rev. Dr. McMasters left St. Paul's to accept a professor- 
 ship in a college at Drennon Springs, Kentucky. Evidently 
 he remained there less than two years, for at the Diocesan 
 Convention held in September, 1853, Bishop Whitehouse 
 reported that the Rev. Dr. McMasters had just returned to 
 St. Paul's. 
 
 In 1852, Bishop Chase having died, the Rev. Henry John 
 Whitehouse became Bishop of Illinois. At the convention 
 in 1853 Bishop Whitehouse reported: "St. Paul's is a defec- 
 tive old stone building, bought for eighteen hundreds dol- 
 lars from another religious body and is not susceptible of 
 improvement. The idea of a new church is being agitated." 
 The descriptions of the first St. Paul's make no mention of 
 a recessed space for an altar, or a sanctuary. It is most 
 likely that the old building did not have sufficient space for 
 the altar, and that there were other defects in its plan from 
 a standpoint of church ritual. Within five or six years 
 after the building was purchased, the congregation began to 
 plan for a new one. The February, 1851, issue of the 
 Spirit of Missions contains a report from the Rev. Dr. 
 McMasters in which he states: "Our church is getting old 
 and dilapidated. It has some elements of a fine church but 
 it was never finished." In this same report the Rev. Dr. 
 McMasters stated that St. Paul's could not support itself, 
 and that the average attendance on Sunday mornings was 
 about one hundred. 
 
 1 1 HP it I I irt 
 
52 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 The NEW ST. PAUL'S CHURCH 
 1856 
 
 Through Capt. Godfrey's efforts a railroad was finally 
 built into Alton in 1852. With the railroad in operation 
 prosperity began to return to Alton and by 1856 the town 
 had recovered from the set back it had experienced in 1837. 
 In 1856 many new buildings were built, many of the streets 
 were graded and remade, gas mains were laid m the 
 streets, a new city hall was begun and a city water works 
 was being planned. It was only natural that St. Paul's 
 Parish, being dissatisfied with its old building and wishing 
 to please and to retain its old rector who had recently come 
 back, would that year proceed with its new building. 
 
 The growth of the Diocese of Illinois during the first 
 decade was not great. In 1846 there were but twenty mem- 
 bers of the clergy, thirty parishes and missions and 777 
 communicants; but by 1856 notable progress had been 
 made; the clergy then numbered forty-eight and there were 
 sixty-eight parishes and missions with 2,393 communicants. 
 Between 1845 and 1856 many of the more prosperous 
 parishes had erected new churches; St. Paul's, Springfield, 
 was a notable church that had been built during this 
 period; if St. Paul's, Alton, was to hold the position it had 
 created for itself during the past ten years, a new building 
 was necessary. 
 
 In the past twenty-five years several brief histories of 
 St. Paul's Church have been written, and in many of these 
 accounts the assertion is definitely made that the old walls 
 of the first St. Paul's still stand. Alton tradition supports 
 these assertions and maintains that only a portion of the 
 old walls was wrecked in 1856, and that in reality the pres- 
 ent structure is an enlargement of the first church. There 
 is much strong evidence to cause one to believe that the 
 construction was done in this manner. This is a vital point 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 53 
 
 in the history of St. Paul's; indeed, it is the factor which 
 unites a great past with the present. 
 
 Exactly what took place in 1856, when St. Paul's was 
 reconstructed, remains for the present a debatable question. 
 It is greatly to be regretted that no records can be found 
 which describe in detail the building operations. We find 
 in the reports of the Diocese of Illinois and in old gazet- 
 teers statements which would lead one to believe that the 
 Godfrey church was entirely removed to make way for the 
 new edifice. On the other hand definite information which 
 can scarcely mean anything except that portions of the old 
 building remain, and the discovery of a portion of an old 
 wall which unquestionably belonged to the old church, are 
 facts which form irrefutable evidence that the old struc- 
 ture was not entirely removed in 1856. 
 
 Haire in A Gazetteer of Madison County states: 
 
 "The Vestry determined to remove the old 
 building and the present edifice is the result of 
 their labors." 
 
 Miss Harriet C. Dolbee's short but carefully prepared 
 history of St. Paul's Church records that the Rev. Dr. 
 McMasters chose for the text of his last sermon preached 
 in the old church, the 2nd verse of the 24th chapter of St. 
 Matthew: 
 
 "There shall not be left here one stone upon 
 another that shall not be thrown down." 
 
 Just how this quotation should be taken is questionable. 
 The worthy rector probably was only speaking figuratively, 
 or he may not have known exactly what the architect and 
 the contractor contemplated doing. He was speaking 
 before the actual building operations had begun and it is 
 clear that a major building operation was being planned. 
 
54 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 On February 29, 1856, the Alton Weekly Courier printed 
 the following announcement: 
 
 "The Building Committee of St. Paul's Church, 
 Alton, Illinois, offers the sum of $100 for the best 
 approved plan and design of a Gothic Church, 
 accompanied with estimates and working specifica- 
 tions. The cost not to exceed $10,000. Dimen- 
 sions 44 feet wide by 100 feet long, including 
 tower and chancel. Material stone. If a central 
 tower, the organ to be in the tower, if a corner 
 tower the organ to be in an alcove in the side of 
 the church. Open roof. One front and one end 
 to be range work. Buttresses may be omitted on 
 one side and the end. The ground is a corner lot 
 on the corner of the street. Plans must be sent 
 to the address of Mr. S. A. Buckmaster on, or 
 before, March 20, 1856. Missouri Republican 
 please copy until March 20th and send bill to 
 this office." 
 
 On April 24, 1856, the Alton Weekly Courier printed 
 the following announcement: 
 
 "The contract for the New Episcopal Church 
 was let yesterday to Mr. J. A. Miller, Architect, of 
 this city whose plan took the premium offered by 
 the Vestry. The contractor will commence tear- 
 ing down the old church next week. The new 
 church will be 100 feet long, 44 feet wide and 
 40 feet in the clear. Cost to be $10,000/' 
 The wording of the announcement of February 29th is 
 of the utmost significance. It is most unlikely that there 
 were any conditions attached to the lot which necessitated 
 restricting the width of the building. The fixing of the 
 width of the nave was a most extraordinary condition to be 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 55 
 
 written into the architectural program. An architect would 
 ordinarily be given a free hand to determine the width of 
 the nave. Forty-four feet is also unusually wide for a nave 
 of a Gothic church which is only one hundred feet long. 
 In all likelihood any architect who entered this competition 
 would have chosen less than forty-four feet for the width 
 of his church had this dimension not been predetermined. 
 
 The time allotted to the competitors to complete their 
 drawings, write working specifications and prepare esti- 
 mates was less than three weeks. This time element like- 
 wise is of the utmost significance, inasmuch as, a period of 
 but three weeks is very little time to give to an architect to 
 do this amount of work. This short period of time allowed 
 to the competitors, and the restriction of the width of the 
 church, indicate that definite sketch plans had been pre- 
 pared before the announcement appeared in the newspaper 
 on February 29th, and that the sketch plans were based 
 upon using portions of the foundation walls of the first 
 St. Paul's Church which we know from Haire's gazetteer 
 was about forty-four feet wide. 
 
 The announcement in the newspaper of February 29th 
 stated that the front and one side of the church were to be 
 range work. In the actual building operations, these direc- 
 tions were not followed, for the entire building was built 
 of rubble masonry. This departure from the instructions as 
 set forth in the announcement of the building committee 
 was not an unusual procedure. In many cases of rebuilding 
 operations, when the actual wrecking of the structure is 
 done, unknown conditions are revealed which cause changes 
 to be made in the building operations from those originally 
 contemplated. Similar conditions evidently were encoun- 
 tered in the rebuilding of St. Paul's Church in 1856 and 
 may easily offset the statement of the Rev. Dr. McMasters 
 
56 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 that: "There shall not be left here one stone upon another 
 that shall not be thrown down." 
 
 It is only through conjecture that one may even approxi- 
 mately determine what portions of the old walls of the 
 first St. Paul's still stand. The difference in form and in 
 detail between a Colonial church and a Gothic church is 
 great, and it is clear that much tearing down was required 
 to convert the old Colonial building into the present Gothic 
 structure. Careful inspection of the walls above grade of 
 the present church does not reveal the least evidence or 
 trace of an old wall. This lack of evidence however is not 
 necessarily conclusive proof that parts of the original walls 
 above grade do not exist. In almost all buildings which 
 have been rebuilt by adding onto the original walls, settle- 
 ments or pulling apart of the old and the new work become 
 visible; but in St. Paul's there is not the least indication of 
 settlement or of pulling apart. This may be explained by 
 the fact that a portion of the foundation rests upon solid 
 rock and the balace rests upon good earth, below which 
 within five or six feet is rock. The original walls of the 
 old church being of rubble masonry allowed the new work, 
 which was also of rubble, to be woven into the old walls, 
 and as no settlement occurred in the foundations, and as 
 the walls have been repointed from time to time, now after 
 eighty odd years have passed, the union of the old work 
 with the new work cannot be detected. 
 
 It is unlikely that the window openings of the present 
 nave are the original windows of the old church, although 
 they may be. It would not have been impossible to have 
 changed the heads of these windows and made them into 
 pointed arched openings; nor would it have been impossi- 
 ble to have built the buttresses onto the side walls. The 
 work would have been difficult to execute and it is not 
 likely that it was done. It is most probable that the old 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 57 
 
 walls were taken down to the level of the basement Sunday 
 School window sills and that the new work was started at 
 that point. If the work proceeded in this manner, it was 
 only necessary to build in the lower sections, not to exceed 
 four or five feet, of the buttresses into the side walls. This 
 procedure could easily have been done; however, this 
 assumption is mere conjecture, as there is no concrete evi- 
 dence that the work was done in this manner. 
 
 When Bishop Chase built Jubilee College he built the 
 buildings in a simplified Colonial style of architecture, and 
 at the same time, he used pointed arches and stone mullions 
 in the windows of the chapel. No doubt Bishop Chase dur- 
 ing his trips to England had admired the Gothic churches 
 and wished to obtain for his chapels the same religious 
 atmosphere that the Gothic had given to the English 
 churches. It will be recalled that Capt. Godfrey as a young 
 man had lived in Ireland, and this being the case, he, as 
 well as Bishop Chase in England, may have acquired a lik- 
 ing for Gothic arches and used them in his church which he 
 built in Alton. It is, however, very unlikely that he did so, 
 inasmuch as, all of the other buildings, in and around Alton, 
 built by Capt. Godfrey are built in the Colonial style. With 
 our lack of information through drawings or written 
 description of the windows in the nave of the first St. 
 Paul's, it cannot be stated with assurance that the present 
 windows are not the original window openings. 
 
 The DISCOVERY of a SECTION of the FOUNDATION 
 WALLS of the FIRST ST. PAUL'S 
 
 In 1942 the workmen while cutting a hole for heating 
 pipes through a stone wall in the basement observed that 
 the thickness of this wall could not be accounted for in the 
 structure of the present building. This observation brought 
 about further investigation of this wall and uncovered 
 
58 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 irrefutable evidence that the wall belonged to the first St. 
 Paul's. This foundation wall occurs directly below the 
 present stud and plaster wall which separates the vestibule 
 from the nave of the church. This foundation wall is 
 almost twenty-four inches thick and goes down to solid 
 rock, which at this point is about four feet below the sur- 
 face of the dirt beneath the present floor joists of the nave. 
 This stone wall is an inside foundation wall and is not 
 subject to freezing. Had this wall been built in 1856, in 
 all probability it would have been built not deeper than 
 eighteen inches below the surface of the earth beneath the 
 floor joists; nor would this wall have been built more than 
 eighteen inches thick since the wall supports only a frame 
 wall and part of the floor load above. 
 
 This wall unquestionably was the foundation wall of the 
 front or south wall of the original church. The wall is in 
 line with the north wall of the present tower, hence the 
 west wall of the original church starts at the north wall of 
 the tower and runs approximately sixty feet to the north. 
 From this point on, to the north end of the present church, 
 the west wall of the present church is all new work. Like- 
 wise, the east wall of the present church is of old and new 
 work. 
 
 As the first church was known to have been sixty feet in 
 length, there should be a wall, or indications of a wall, at 
 a point sixty feet to the north from this original founda- 
 tion wall. On the west side of what is now the basement, 
 at this point there is a stone wall running at right angles 
 to the outside west wall of the church. In all probability, 
 this wall is a section of the north wall of the old church. 
 This wall extends for a distance of but twelve feet from 
 the outside west wall and there are no indications that the 
 wall ever ran over to the east outside wall of the church. 
 
 It is difficult to account for this absence of a continuous 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 59 
 
 wall at this point. The outside grade of the lot at the north 
 end of the old building was unquestionably lowered in 
 1856 and in doing so this, the north wall of the old church 
 may have been removed in part at least. While it would 
 seem unlikely, it is possible that the north wall of the old 
 church was of frame construction and was carried on piers 
 which have been removed. It will be recalled that the 
 Rev. Dr. McMasters reported to the Spirit of Missions in 
 1851 that the old church was "never finished." This descrip- 
 tion could easily refer to a temporary frame wall which 
 may have formed the north wall of the church and had 
 been made of frame construction so as to permit the build- 
 ing to be enlarged easily. 
 
 Various issues of the Alton Weekly Courier in the years 
 1856 and 1857 carried stories of the grading that was being 
 done to the streets in Alton. Market Street and Third 
 Street were graded at this time. It is also probable that 
 the lot around the church was also lowered slightly in the 
 front, and may have been lowered considerably more on 
 the east side of the building. The level of the earth beneath 
 the floor joists of the present church is, in all probability, 
 the approximate level of the basement Sunday School floor 
 of the old church. The level of the earth beneath the pres- 
 ent floor joists is about the same level as the present grade 
 of the lot in the front of the church. Assuming that the 
 story height of the basement Sunday School was about eight 
 feet, this would mean that the main floor of the old church 
 stood about nine feet above the present outside grade of 
 the lot as it now stands, or about six or seven feet above 
 the original grade of the lot. These dimensions in general 
 correspond to the drawing of the church in the oil painting 
 by Blair Ripley which hangs in the Hayner Library. 
 
 Amongst the few remaining stone masons who have been 
 working at their trade in Alton for a half century or more, 
 
60 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 the tradition that portions of the walls of the first St. 
 Paul's still stand, is regarded as true and is accepted as a 
 well recognized fact. There can be no doubt but that all 
 of the old stone was used again in the present church and 
 probably about twenty-five per cent of the old walls still 
 stands; so that it may be said without fear of contradiction 
 that the stones in the walls of St. Paul's have witnessed the 
 whole panorama of the history of Alton. 
 
 In the 1856 Journal of the Diocese of Illinois Bishop 
 Whitehouse reported that he had visited St. Paul's, Alton, 
 May 18, 1856, and that the building of the new church was 
 proceeding "with vigor and at an early date the old site 
 will be crowned with a new building second to none in the 
 Diocese." In this same Journal, the Rev. Dr. McMasters 
 reported: "A new church edifice will soon be completed in 
 the parish. It is an elegant Gothic building, forty-four by 
 one hundred feet — open roof — with chancel, and corner 
 tower. The cost will be in all about fifteen thousand dol- 
 lars." 
 
 The new edifice that was built in 1856 was considered 
 by the bishop and by the parish as being a new building. 
 In the 1857 Journal of the Diocese of Illinois is the follow- 
 ing report: "Sunday, July 4, 1857. Consecration of a large 
 new edifice — St. Paul's Church, Alton. It stands upon the 
 site of the old one and is in many respects a convenient 
 and a great structure." 
 
 It is of special interest to note that the Rev. Dr. McMas- 
 ters referred to the open roof in his report to the 1856 
 convention, and that an open roof was one of the definite 
 instructions of the building committee as set forth in their 
 announcement of the architectural competition published in 
 the Alton Weekly Courier on February 29, 1856. There 
 are in Alton several copies of a lithograph of a birdseye 
 view of Alton in I860, in which the new St. Paul's is 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 61 
 
 clearly shown. While the drawing is small it was done 
 with remarkable accuracy, and shows that very little change 
 has been made to the exterior of the church during the past 
 eighty-seven years. The drawing was evidently made in the 
 spring of I860 as the top of the tower, as it was built in 
 1856, is shown. The Alton Weekly Courier on June 16, 
 1856, announced that the ladies of St. Paul's would hold a 
 festival every day during the week of the state fair and 
 that the proceeds were to go towards paying for the decora- 
 tion of the new church. 
 
 The new church as it was built in 1856 was forty- four 
 feet wide and one hundred feet long. The plan included 
 a front vestibule about twelve feet wide, a tower on the 
 southwest corner and a small room on the southeast corner 
 which forms a false tower, nave and sanctuary with rooms 
 on either side. The tower was fourteen feet square at the 
 base and rose to a height of about sixty-five feet. The litho- 
 graph of Alton made in I860 shows that the top of the 
 tower rose about fifteen feet above the ridge of the roof 
 over the nave. The four sides of the top of the tower 
 terminated in small gables, flanked on each side, with stone 
 pinnacles which were a continuation of the corner buttresses 
 of the tower. Below each of these gables was a tall Gothic 
 window with a center mullion. These windows were filled 
 with wooden louvers and served the bell loft. The nave 
 was lighted on each side by four tall Gothic windows with 
 center mullions. The sanctuary was narrow and shallow 
 with a tall Gothic window over the altar. On the west side 
 was a sacristy, and on the east, a small room similar to the 
 sacristy. The organ was in the gallery over the front ves- 
 tibule; here also was the choir. The church was first heated 
 by stoves, if heated at all. The minutes of the vestry per- 
 taining to the repairs after the tornado in I860, mention 
 the fact that flues were being added at this time. The 
 
62 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 interior was greatly enhanced by the open roof construc- 
 tion. The church was regarded when built as one of the 
 finest in Illinois. St. Paul's was one of the earliest exam- 
 ples of Gothic in the Middle West. St. Paul's, Springfield, 
 had been built about ten years previously; it too was a 
 splendid example of early English Gothic. The stone work, 
 the general lines, the proportion of most of the windows, 
 the buttresses and various other details of both of these 
 churches were executed with great skill, knowledge, good 
 taste and good judgment. St. Paul's as it stands today, 
 practically as it was originally built in 1856, compares 
 favorably with many of the small parish churches of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 A letter signed Neighborhood which appeared in the 
 Alton Weekly Courier July 17, 1856, throws a colorful side 
 light on the primitive conditions which were still existing 
 in Alton at the time St. Paul's was actually at work on its 
 new church. In describing the condition of the old market 
 house and the streets in front of St. Paul's and immediately 
 around the market house, Neighborhood wrote: 
 
 ". . . now rotten, filthy and stinking, smeared 
 with a little whitewash but with a great deal more 
 of blood. Guts and filth are strewn all over the 
 neighborhood, yes, literally paved with beef bones. 
 The program of the evening begins with the howl- 
 ing of angry dogs as they contend for choice bones 
 and lasts until near midnight when the wheels of 
 the butchers' carts scare them away." 
 
 The architect, J. A. Miller, Esq. of St. Paul's Church lived 
 in Alton for a number of years where he enjoyed a success- 
 ful practice. His name is to be found in the city directories 
 during the 1850's. In 1856 he was building the most impor- 
 tant building in the town, the new city hall which stood in 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 63 
 
 the center of the public square at the foot of Market Street 
 until 1929 when it was torn down. The old city hall was 
 a splendid, well designed, Colonial building. The fact that 
 the architect could handle with equal facility both the 
 Gothic and the Colonial styles of architecture is evidence 
 of his skill and ability. In 1856 Mr. Miller was commis- 
 sioned to design sketch plans for a monument to Elijah P. 
 Lovejoy which was being proposed by an organization 
 formed in New\ England. This monument was to be 
 erected in Alton and was to be one hundred feet high, 
 pyramidal in form, seven feet wide at the top and twelve 
 feet wide at the base and was to rest upon a platform forty 
 feet wide and four feet high. Mr. Miller evidently left 
 Alton before I860, for after the tornado the vestry on June 
 20, 1860, called in Mr. Cleveland, Architect, to advise them 
 on the repairs. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. McMasters was one of the outstanding 
 rectors to serve St. Paul's. He had come to Alton when 
 the parish badly needed a rector; he built up the church 
 and left it with a splendid new edifice. He served the 
 parish long and at a most critical period. He was tall of 
 stature and carried himself with great dignity. His manner 
 was gentle; he was a man of deep spiritual character and 
 possessed marked administrative ability; he was much 
 beloved and endeared himself to his congregation. Before 
 becoming an Episcopal rector, he had been a Methodist 
 circuit rider, during which period of his life he was accus- 
 tomed to prepare his sermons on horseback. In 1858 the 
 Rev. Dr. McMasters left St. Paul's to accept the presidency 
 of St. Paul's College at Palmyra, Missouri. Undoubtedly he 
 was a man of parts. He was a noted scholar and the author 
 of several books. He compiled an index of Title and 
 Proper Names Mentioned in Hume's History of England. 
 He was frequently referred to as "the famous Dr. McMas- 
 
64 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 ters." He had amazing energy and a most engaging per- 
 sonality. As soon as the Civil War broke out he entered 
 the army as a chaplain and served with distinction the 27th 
 Regiment while it was stationed at Cairo, Illinois. The 
 Rev. Dr. McMasters died in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1878 
 at the age of sixty-five. 
 
 JUDGE JOHN BAILHACHE 
 
 No history of St. Paul's would fail to mention the name 
 of Judge John Bailhache, one of the original founders of 
 the parish and one of its most faithful servants. Without 
 his faithful services the parish would unquestionably have 
 died within a few years after it was formed. Born in 1787, 
 on the He of Jersey, of gentle lineage, he came to the 
 United States in 1810 and first engaged in journalism in 
 Ohio. In 1835 he went to St. Louis hoping to purchase an 
 interest in The Missouri Republican. Failing in that 
 endeavor, he went to Alton and purchased a one-half inter- 
 est in The Alton Telegraph, in the publication of which he 
 was associated with Mr. S. R. Dolbee until 1849. In 1855 
 Judge Bailhache retired from business. He died in 1857. 
 The first funeral held in the new St. Paul's was that of 
 Judge Bailhache. With his passing it might be said that 
 the first period in the life of St. Paul's ended. Judge Bail- 
 hache was a scholar; he spoke French fluently as this was 
 his native tongue. He was long recognized as an outstand- 
 ing newspaper man. The Rev. Dr. McMasters referred to 
 him thus: "Instead of appearing like a business man pro- 
 fessing religion, Judge Bailhache appeared like a Christian 
 engaged in business from a sense of duty." 
 
 On February 3, 1859, thieves broke into the church and 
 stole the pulpit Bible, the communion plate and the priest's 
 vestments. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 65 
 
 In 1859, Mr. Charles Trumbull, one of the members of 
 the first vestry and for long years a faithful worker, died. 
 
 REV. C. A. BRUCE 
 
 1859 
 
 The Rev. C. A. Bruce became rector of St. Paul's April 
 1, 1859. The first minutes of the vestry of St. Paul's 
 Church which are still in existence begin with the meeting 
 of the vestry on April 25, 1859. On June 1, I860, a ter- 
 rific tornado hit Alton and swept away the top of the tower 
 on St. Paul's Church. Haire in his gazetteer states that the 
 whole roof of the church was ruined and other parts badly 
 damaged. The church bell was broken at this time and 
 since that storm, now a period of eighty-three years, St. 
 Paul's Church has been without a bell. 
 
 On June 4th, the vestry met in the counting room of 
 Mr. J. W. Scheppe to discuss what steps should be taken 
 to find a place of worship and to repair the damage to the 
 church. During the month of June the vestry held several 
 meetings; at one of these meetings a report was made that 
 the First Congregational Church had offered the use of its 
 building to St. Paul's congregation. This very friendly 
 offer was accepted by the vestry. At one of these June 
 meetings of the vestry, a decision was made to send the 
 rector east to solicit funds for repairing the church. The 
 vestry voted that one hundred dollars be allotted for the 
 expense of the trip. At this moment the treasurer promptly 
 reminded the vestry that there was not that amount of 
 money in the treasury, whereupon the members of the ves- 
 try personally agreed to stand the expense. At a vestry 
 meeting on June 20th, a letter was read from Mr. S. B. 
 Bancroft of Philadelphia, the holder of a three thousand 
 dollar mortgage on the church property. In his letter Mr. 
 Bancroft, out of consideration for the deplorable situation 
 
66 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 that the church was in, agreed to reduce the interest rate 
 from ten per cent per year to five per cent and to extend 
 the debt until 1867, provided that all back interest be paid 
 up at the rate of five per cent. It is not altogether clear 
 just what was the total indebtedness of the parish immedi- 
 ately after the tornado; Mr. Bancroft referred to the mort- 
 gage of three thousand dollars; Bishop Whitehouse in his 
 address at the Diocesan Convention in September men- 
 tioned the sum as being six thousand dollars. In any event 
 the debt was rather unusual in view of the fact that the 
 church, in 1857, was free of debt and was consecrated in 
 that year. 
 
 Referring to St. Paul's, Bishop Whitehouse reported to 
 the convention: 
 
 "Alton was visited by one of the furious tor- 
 nadoes which have left their track of ruin this sea- 
 son. St. Paul's Church, Alton, suffered severely, 
 and the hopes of the people were as prostrate as 
 the building. A large debt of six thousand dollars 
 pressed upon them, and they found themselves 
 thrown out of a place of worship, without the 
 means to rebuild, repair or pay the indebtedness. 
 In this emergency an appeal for relief to the other 
 churches seemed inevitable, and with sad heart, 
 but resolute, the rector has gone forth to make it. 
 The result has been encouraging. As a business 
 transaction, the debt has been favorably arranged 
 and a fair amount of money has been contributed 
 for the restoration of the church. It will be re- 
 membered that this church ranked among the larg- 
 est churches in the diocese, and was built within 
 the past four years." 
 
 At the meeting of the vestry on August 20th, a report 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 67 
 
 was made by Mr. L. D. Cleavland, Architect, who had been 
 called in, in the absence of Mr. Miller, to advise on the 
 rebuilding of the church. At this meeting the work of 
 restoring the building was let to Messrs. Armstrong and 
 Pfeiffenberger, Builders, of Alton. At a meeting of the 
 vestry on August 27th, the report was read of the assess- 
 ment for St. Paul's Church for the support of the bishop, 
 the amount being $88.25; in addition there was to be an 
 assessment of twenty-five cents for each communicant to 
 take care of the expenses of the General Convention. At 
 this meeting a committee was appointed to call upon each 
 communicant and collect the assessment of twenty-five cents. 
 
 There were evidently some differences of opinion concern- 
 ing the work of reconstruction, for at the meeting of the 
 vestry on October 8th, Mr. Dolbee, member of the building 
 committee, requested that some one else take his place on 
 the committee as he was not in accord with all of the 
 recommendations of the architect. At this meeting the new 
 roof construction and the advisability of strengthening some 
 of the walls were discussed. It will be recalled that one of 
 the striking features of the new church was its open roof, 
 and that this was a feature specifically called for in the 
 announcement of the architectural competition for designs 
 for the new church. The Rev. Dr. McMasters, in his report 
 to the Diocesan Convention in 1856, took special care to 
 mention the fact that the new church was built with an 
 open roof. With a debt of six thousand dollars already on 
 the parish and being faced with an additional expense of 
 restoring the building, it is evident that the vestry did not 
 feel justified in putting back the open roof which would 
 have run the total cost of restoration over five thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 The new roof that was put on in 1860 was built of rough 
 milled lumber not over three inches in thickness. In place 
 
68 ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 of the once handsome open trusses formed of large timbers, 
 the new trusses were built up of smaller timbers spiked 
 together. The new rafters were of similar lumber. This 
 somewhat temporary or rough construction, while equally 
 as strong as the original roof construction, was not orna- 
 mental enough to serve as a ceiling for the church, and it 
 in turn was closed in by a hung plaster ceiling. The min- 
 utes of the vestry state that the cost of the work of restora- 
 tion was fourteen hundred dollars. Messrs. George D. and 
 John M. Pfeiffenberger, Architects, sons of Lucas Pfeiffen- 
 berger, of the firm of Armstrong and Pfeiffenberger, have 
 recently found in the well preserved records of their dis- 
 tinguished father, the original ledger sheet pertaining to 
 the repairs made in I860 to St. Paul's Church. These rec- 
 ords show that the firm of Armstrong and Pfeiffenberger 
 received the sum of fourteen hundred and twenty dollars 
 for this work. 
 
 During the fall of I860 the vestry of St. Paul's quite 
 naturally had to face many serious problems brought on by 
 the tornado, one of which was to pay the rector's salary. 
 At a meeting of the vestry, in October the Rev. Mr. Bruce 
 asked to be excused from serving longer on the committee 
 which was soliciting funds for the repairs and notified the 
 vestry of his intention to resign in April as rector of St. 
 Paul's. In January a settlement was made with the Rev. 
 Mr. Bruce whose salary at this time was about one hun- 
 dred dollars a month. In March, 1861, the Rev. Mr. Bruce 
 left St. Paul's; he was said to have been something of an 
 eccentric person. 
 
 REV. JOHN FOSTER 
 
 1861 
 
 The Rev. John Foster became rector of St. Paul's in 
 April, 1861. He was a noble Christian character and left 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 69 
 
 a deep spiritual impression on the parish. During his first 
 year in Alton, he lived in the church in the corner room on 
 the gallery floor, over what is now the baptistry. He is 
 said to have prepared his own breakfasts and for the rest 
 of his meals dined with members of his congregation. When 
 he came his salary was fixed at eight hundred dollars a 
 year, but due to the financial condition of the church he 
 gave most of his salary back to the church. In October, 
 1862, Mr. T. S. Topping became choir master. In Septem- 
 ber, 1863, the treasurer reported that the church had re- 
 cently received a bill from their old rector, the Rev. Dr. 
 McMasters, for the balance due him on his salary. This 
 matter was referred to the vestry's committee on old claims. 
 The minutes of the vestry meeting on April 16, 1863, 
 are the first minutes written in the beautiful, but somewhat 
 difficult to read, handwriting of Mr. Gaius Paddock. Mr. 
 Paddock served as secretary and as treasurer of St. Paul's 
 for many years. Many entries in the minutes of the vestry 
 are in the handwriting of Mr. Paddock. In 1878 Mr. Pad- 
 dock left Alton and moved to St. Louis. For many years 
 he attended Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis where he 
 had a pew in the front row and became a familiar figure 
 there on Sunday mornings. Mr. Paddock died in 1936 at 
 the age of one hundred and was buried in the family bury- 
 ing ground at Moro, Madison County, Illinois. The farm 
 on which the burying ground is located is still owned by 
 the children of Gaius Paddock. The land was bought from 
 the government in 1817 by the first Gaius Paddock in Illi- 
 nois, the grandfather of Gaius Paddock, one time treasurer 
 of St. Paul's Church. The first Gaius Paddock had been a 
 soldier in the War of the Revolution and was with Wash- 
 ington when he crossed the Delaware. Mr. Paddock, one- 
 time treasurer of St. Paul's, was all his life a devout Epis- 
 copalian. Always kind and considerate, he possessed a very 
 
70 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 courtly manner and was universally regarded as a fine 
 example of a truly Christian gentleman. 
 
 The Rev. John Foster left St. Paul's in April, 1864. 
 
 REV. DR. McCULLOUGH 
 
 1864 
 
 The Rev. Dr. McCullough became rector of St. Paul's 
 Church in the spring of 1864 at a salary of one thousand 
 dollars a year. His Christian name does not appear in the 
 minutes of the vestry. In the minutes he was always 
 referred to as the Rev. Dr. McCullough. He was a stately, 
 dignified cultured gentleman. The names of Messrs. J. S. 
 Topping, G. Paddock, S. R. Dolbee, M. M. Dutro, J. W. 
 Schweppe and Joseph Gratian appear frequently in the 
 minutes of the vestry about this time. These were the try- 
 ing years of the Civil War and St. Paul's Church was 
 experiencing difficulties in holding its position in the dio- 
 cese. The old difficulty of meeting the rector's salary was 
 ever present; on November 5, 1866, the Rev. Dr. McCul- 
 lough notified the vestry that as soon as the church paid 
 him the balance due on his salary as rector, he intended to 
 resign the rectorship of St. Paul's. The matter was evi- 
 dently settled for St. Paul's had a new rector the following 
 year. 
 
 REV. C. S. ABBOTT 
 1867 
 
 On May 20, 1867, an offer of eighteen hundred dollars a 
 year as salary was made to the Rev. C. S. Abbott. The Rev. 
 Mr. Abbott accepted this offer and came to St. Paul's some 
 time in the summer or early fall of 1867. Miss Dolbee, in 
 her history of St. Paul's, states that the Rev. Mr. Abbott 
 was the most evangelical rector to serve St. Paul's, and that 
 during his rectorship the services were conducted accord- 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 71 
 
 ing to the Low Church traditions. It was during the 1860's 
 and 1870's that the great debates took place in the General 
 Conventions over the details of the so-called High Church 
 and Low Church practices, a matter never setttled at any 
 time by vote of the convention, but rather left to the dis- 
 cretion of the bishop of each diocese to decide. The result 
 has been that we have seen a marked tendency to return to 
 the beauty of the ancient forms of worship which during 
 the early centuries distinguished the Anglican Church. 
 
 In 1869 Bishop Whitehouse had the honor of preaching 
 the opening sermon at the first conference of the Anglican 
 and the American Episcopal Church held in Lambeth Pal- 
 ace. Bishop Whitehouse was the first bishop in the United 
 States to establish the cathedral system; he also advised that 
 the Diocese of Illinois be divided, but up until the date 
 of his death in 1874, no action was taken. 
 
 Trinity Chapel on State Street was built in 1870. In Feb- 
 ruary 1871 the handsome new organ, built by Mr. Gratian, 
 was accepted by the vestry of St. Paul's. The new organ 
 was placed in the front of the church at this time. The 
 first vested choir at St. Paul's was established in 1871. The 
 Rev. Mr. Abbott remained as rector until the spring of 
 1872. During the five years he had served as rector he 
 endeared himself to his parishioners. 
 
 April 1, 1872, the vestry voted to open the church for 
 services to be conducted by a lay reader. 
 
 REV. MARSH CHASE 
 
 1873 
 
 The Rev. Marsh Chase began his rectorship at St. Paul's 
 in August, 1873. Amongst the many devoted church work- 
 ers during the Rev. Mr. Chase's rectorship, the name of 
 Mrs. John J. Mitchell stands out prominently. At a meet- 
 ing of the vestry on July 12, 1874, the question of dividing 
 
72 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 the diocese was discussed. The parish was requested to 
 pledge itself to pay two hundred dollars a year toward the 
 support of the bishop of the proposed new diocese. Later 
 this sum was raised to three hundred dollars. The pledges 
 were to bear interest at the rate of ten per cent per year. 
 In 1878 a hot air heating plant was installed in the base- 
 ment to take the place of the stoves which had been in use 
 since 1856. Much of the stone coping on the gables was 
 renewed at this time. 
 
 At a meeting of the vestry in May, 1880, the treasurer 
 reported that but $1,713 had been collected during the past 
 year. During the Rev. Mr. Chase's rectorship, St. Paul's 
 was unfortunate in losing a number of its parishioners who 
 were forced to leave Alton on account of their businesses 
 being removed from Alton. The report of the treasurer 
 prompted the Rev. Mr. Chase to suggest that his salary as 
 rector be cut in half. In October the rector resigned. 
 
 After the death of Bishop Whitehouse in 1873, the Dio- 
 cese of Illinois elected the Rev. George Franklin Seymour, 
 Bishop of Illinois. The General Convention, however, 
 refused to confirm his election. A special convention of 
 the diocese was then called and the Rev. Dr. James De 
 Koven was chosen bishop. This time the Standing Com- 
 mittees refused to approve the selection. Finally the Rev. 
 William Edward McLaren, rector of Trinity Church, Cleve- 
 land, was elected and received the approval of the next 
 General Convention in 1875. The Diocese of Illinois in 
 1877 was finally divided into three parts, the Diocese of 
 Chicago, the Diocese of Quincy and the Diocese of Spring- 
 field. In 1878 the Rev. George Franklin Seymour became 
 the first Bishop of Springfield. Bishop Seymour was a 
 famous scholar, a gracious gentleman and a godly priest 
 under whom the Diocese of Springfield grew and pros- 
 pered. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 73 
 
 At the meeting of the vestry on November 24, 1880, a 
 letter from Bishop Seymour was read in which he recom- 
 mended the Rev. Thomas W. Haskins as rector of St. 
 Paul's. At this meeting, the vestry voted to express their 
 appreciation of the interest that the Bishop was taking in 
 St. Paul's but, as they expressed themselves in the minutes, 
 "at the same time, we would be pleased to see and to hear 
 the Rev. Mr. Haskins, before extending him a formal call." 
 At the meeting of the vestry on December 2nd, a second 
 letter from Bishop Seymour was read. In this letter the 
 Bishop stated that the Rev. Mr. Haskins would on the 
 coming Sunday conduct service in Belleville and suggested 
 that the vestry send a committee there to see and to hear 
 him. On December 6th, the committee reported that it had 
 been to Belleville to hear the Rev. Mr. Haskins and that it 
 was much impressed by him. The vestry, accordingly at 
 this December 6th, meeting, voted to offer the Rev. Mr. 
 Haskins one thousand dollars a year and to increase this 
 sum as soon as possible. 
 
 REV. THOMAS W. HASKINS 
 1880 
 
 The Rev. Thomas W. Haskins began his rectorship in 
 December, 1880. In 1881 extensive repairs were made to 
 the church. The interior was completely redecorated at this 
 time. Within a year the treasurer was again reporting dif- 
 ficulty in making collections. The collections during 1882 
 were not sufficient to permit the vestry to pay the rector a 
 salary which would support himself and his family. In 
 March, 1883, the Rev. Mr. Haskins resigned. The Rev. Mr. 
 Haskins had become inspired by reading Bishop Chase's 
 Reminiscences and after leaving St. Paul's undertook to 
 re-open Jubilee College. The undertaking, however, met 
 with but little success. 
 
74 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 REV. FRANCIS M. S. TAYLOR 
 
 1883 
 
 The Rev. Francis M. S. Taylor became rector of St. 
 Paul's in October, 1883. His salary was to be one thousand 
 dollars a year and he was granted permission to serve 
 Ed wards ville at the same time. On December 16, 1883, 
 the treasurer reported that only $904.25 had been collected 
 since January 1, 1883. However, the minutes of the vestry 
 show that from September 30, 1883 to October 2, 1884, the 
 collections amounted to $2,205.35. On February 20, 1885, 
 Bishop Seymour presented a lot to the church for a rec- 
 tory, and in October of the same year the vestry made a 
 loan for the purpose of building a rectory, the cornerstone 
 of which was laid on November 4, 1885. The income of 
 the parish during the next few years remained small and 
 it was deemed advisable to rent the rectory rather than use 
 it for a residence for the rector. October 28, 1889, the Rev. 
 Mr. Taylor resigned. 
 
 REV. HORACE B. GOODYEAR 
 1890 
 
 The Rev. Horace B. Goodyear became the rector of St. 
 Paul's in the summer of 1890. In the summer of 1890, the 
 earth bank to the east of the rectory gave way and slid 
 against the building, wrecking it badly. 
 
 In November, 1891, the Rev. Mr. Goodyear resigned as 
 rector of St. Paul's. 
 
 REV. FATHER GEORGE T. GRIFFITH 
 
 1892 
 
 The Rev. Father George T. Griffith came to St. Paul's in 
 May, 1892. In the fall of that year he received a call from 
 St. Clement's, Philadelphia, a stronghold of the Catholic 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 75 
 
 faith. In November, 1892, the Rev. Father Griffith left 
 St. Paul's. Father Griffith conducted the services at St. 
 Paul's in accordance with High Church traditions; his last 
 sermon preached in St. Paul's was "What do we mean by 
 High Church and Low Church?" 
 
 REV. FATHER HENRY M. CHITTENDEN 
 
 1892 
 
 At a meeting of the vestry in December, 1892, a vote was 
 taken to invite the Rev. Father Henry M. Chittenden to 
 become rector of St. Paul's Church. It is probable that he 
 became rector shortly after receiving this call; however the 
 next minutes of the vestry, after those of December, 1892, 
 are of the date of November 13, 1893. At this meeting of 
 the vestry, Father Chittenden occupied the chair. His was 
 a long and successful rectorship. 
 
 The recorded minutes of the vestry have been the main 
 source of information on the different rectorships beginning 
 with that of the Rev. Mr. Bruce in 1859 and ending with 
 that of the Rev. Father Griffith. Those thirty-three years 
 were none too flourishing in the life of the parish. The 
 minutes of the vestry are devoted largely to the troubles 
 of the treasurer. In those thirty-three years St. Paul's had 
 nine different rectors. Those thirty-three years included the 
 periods of the Civil War and the industrial collapse of the 
 1870's; they included likewise periods of encouragements 
 and of cheer, but in general those thirty-three years were a 
 period of trial and of tribulation. Yet in spite of these 
 difficulties St. Paul's never faltered. Its religious work con- 
 tinued, and as soon as one rector resigned the vestry imme- 
 diately set about to obtain another. 
 
 The rectorship of the Rev. Father Chittenden marks the 
 beginning of a period in the life of the parish which was 
 to be very different from the thirty-three years which pre- 
 
76 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 ceded it. In a way it may be said that the third period in 
 the life of St. Paul's began with the rectorship of the Rev. 
 Father Chittenden. About a decade before the beginning 
 of the twentieth century, the industrial and the economic 
 life of the city of Alton began to change, and in the half 
 century that followed many of its industries grew to be 
 vast enterprises which brought prosperity to the community. 
 This great industrial development was reflected in the 
 growth of the cultural and the religious institutions of the 
 city. The stabilization of St. Paul's Parish is shown by the 
 fact that from 1893 to 1941, a period of forty-eight years, 
 the parish had but four rectors, one of whom remained 
 over seventeen years and one remained sixteen years. 
 
 When Father Chittenden first came to St. Paul's, the rec- 
 tory was still being rented to bring in additional income 
 for the parish, but within a few years the parish income 
 had increased sufficiently to allow the rector and his family 
 to occupy the building. During Father Chittenden's rector- 
 ship many improvements and alterations were made to the 
 church. The choir gallery was closed off by a light wooden 
 screen, the front vestibule was tiled and the present and 
 somewhat unfortunate wooden ceiling of the nave was put 
 up. The eagle lectern, the bishop's chair and new front 
 doors were bought at this time from funds presented the 
 church by Mr. Nelson Edwards as a memorial to his father 
 and grandmother, Mrs. Harriet Cooper. In 1901 the parish 
 was at last out of debt for the first time in fifteen years. 
 The Rev. Father Chittenden was a very devout and reli- 
 gious man and was greatly loved by his parishioners. In 
 October, 1910, the Rev. Father Chittenden resigned the 
 rectorship of St. Paul's. 
 
 Upon the death of the beloved Bishop Seymour in 1906, 
 the Rev. Edward William Osborne became the second 
 bishop of Springfield. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 77 
 
 REV. FATHER ARTHUR GOODYER 
 1911 
 
 The Rev. Father Arthur Goodyer became rector in Feb- 
 ruary, 1911. Under his rectorship, the present commodious 
 parish house was built. The architect was Mr. James M. 
 Maupin of Alton. The cornerstone was laid by Bishop 
 Osborne, June 14, 1913. At this ceremony sixty parishioners 
 were present who had witnessed the consecration of the 
 rebuilt church which took place in 1857. 
 
 In October, 1916, the Rev. Father Goodyer resigned as 
 rector of St. Paul's. 
 
 In 1916 Bishop Osborne resigned his bishopric and in 
 April, 1917, the Rev. Granville Hudson Sherwood was 
 consecrated Bishop of Springfield. 
 
 REV. FATHER FREDRICK D. BUTLER 
 
 1917 
 
 The Rev. Father Fredrick D. Butler followed Father 
 Goodyer in 1917. His highly enthusiastic and most pleas- 
 ing personality, together with his untiring efforts to main- 
 tain and to build up every phase of the work of the parish 
 endeared him to his congregation. After seven years of 
 splendid service to St. Paul's, Father Butler was called to 
 become the rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, 
 St. Paul, Minnesota. 
 
 In November, 1923, Bishop Sherwood died suddenly. 
 In May, 1924, the Rev. John Chanler White became Bishop 
 of Springfield. 
 
 REV. FATHER ROBERT HALL ATCHISON 
 1925 
 
 The Rev. Father Robert Hall Atchison became rector of 
 St. Paul's in October, 1925. Father Atchison's fine sense of 
 
78 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 churchmanship, his brilliant personality, his intellectual 
 gifts and his wide interest in civic affairs were widely rec- 
 ognized. Ever since Father Chittenden's time, some of the 
 members of St. Paul's have always addressed their rector as 
 Father. Under Father Atchison's rectorship, happily, the 
 custom grew so that now it is general. During Father 
 Atchison's rectorship many improvements were made to the 
 church and it was during his rectorship that the parish dis- 
 covered that it had never taken out legal papers of incor- 
 poration. As a result St. Paul's Parish became in 1937 an 
 incorporated body. In 1935 St. Paul's celebrated its first 
 centennial, the date of which may well be questioned in 
 view of the letter of Bishop Kemper which stated that 
 "St. Paul's Church in the town of Alton" was founded on 
 February 20, 1836. The centennial celebration brought 
 forth a splendid financial effort through which the sum of 
 thirty thousand dollars was raised for the benefit of the 
 church. At this time the present very handsome pews were 
 installed. In the spring of 1941 the Rev. Father Atchison 
 resigned as rector of St. Paul's Church. 
 
 REV. FATHER MARSDEN E. WHITFORD 
 1941 
 
 On St. Peter's Day, June, 1941, the Rev. Marsden E. 
 Whitford was ordained a priest by the Rt. Rev. Frank 
 Arthur McElwain, Bishop of Minnesota, in St. Paul's-on- 
 the-Hill, St. Paul, Minnesota. In July he was made rector 
 of St. Paul's, Alton. In the two years that have passed 
 since the Rev. Father Whitford became rector, a marked 
 change has come over St. Paul's Church, and if he did not 
 bring with him long experience as a priest, he did bring to 
 the church a new constructive spirit and a high sense of 
 churchmanship which has brought forth from the congre- 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 79 
 
 gation enthusiastic co-operation and renewed devotion to 
 the traditions of St. Paul's. 
 
 The Rev. Father Whitford had not been at St. Paul's 
 long before he recognized the fact that he had become the 
 rector of an old and an important parish. He recognized 
 too that the parish church was no common structure. The 
 naive, yet noble, rugged simplicity of its Gothic architec- 
 ture, the many fine elements of its design, the pleasing 
 character of its stone walls, and perhaps above all, the his- 
 toric background of the old building, appealed to the new 
 rector. The building, however, was badly in need of repair. 
 There were parts of the building which were in such a run- 
 down condition that they were no longer usable. The bal- 
 cony and the room which is now the baptistry had not been 
 in use for fifty years. The Rev. Father Whitford, however, 
 had the vision to see that the old church could be made into 
 a fine modern church and at the same time preserve all of 
 the original design of the structure, and with the thought 
 in mind of making certain alterations to the church, the 
 rector called in for consultation the author of these pages. 
 He pointed out to the architect that the abandoned rooms 
 could be made beautiful and useful. He suggested that the 
 room on the first floor of the east tower be made into a 
 baptistry and that the room in the west tower be made into 
 a peace chapel. It was at once evident that the sanctuary 
 was too small and that the space occupied by the choir was 
 much too large so that it gave the effect of dwarfing the 
 whole nave. The rector pointed out that the choir and the 
 organ originally had been in the balcony over the front 
 vestibule and suggested that they be put back in their orig- 
 inal location so that the sanctuary could be made wider and 
 deeper. All of these suggestions of the rector were con- 
 firmed by the architect, and as these changes were to involve 
 considerable alterations to the church, both the rector and 
 
80 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 the architect agreed that great care should be taken to see 
 that the work was carried out so as to conform strictly to 
 the original design of the building. 
 
 In carrying out these alterations it became advisable to 
 change various details or elements of the original design. 
 In general the details of the old church were very nicely 
 proportioned; however the rubble arched opening of the 
 front door was excessively wide for one door and had been 
 reduced in width by the insertion of a wooden frame; the 
 large window over the front door was much too high, so 
 high in fact that the head of the window came dangerously 
 near the stone coping at the top of the gable. The wooden 
 frame in this window years ago had given away and had 
 been braced and held together in a crude temporary man- 
 ner by wooden timbers, but as the balcony was closed off 
 this rough construction was not visible from the nave. It 
 will be recalled that the original wooden front doors and 
 frame had been replaced in 1898. Now in 1941 the door 
 and frame had again given away. 
 
 The stone sill of the window over the front door was 
 raised two feet, and the head of the window was lowered 
 about eight feet. This work necessitated taking down, for 
 a distance of about eight feet, the entire top of the front 
 gable. The original stone cross at the top of the gable had 
 also deteriorated and was replaced by a slightly smaller 
 stone cross, similar in design, when the gable was rebuilt. 
 Tracery of Bedford stone replaced the wooden frame of 
 this window over the front door and in its openings new 
 stained glass was set. This glass was made by Mr. Emil 
 Frei of St. Louis and is a remarkable reproduction of the 
 original glass which was set in the church in 1856. The 
 wooden frame of the front door was replaced by a frame of 
 Bedford stone and a pair of doors opening out installed. 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 81 
 
 The wrought iron pulls of these doors were formerly on 
 the old doors. 
 
 The idea of rebuilding the top of the west tower was 
 first suggested by Mr. Harry B. Mathews, Jr. in the spring 
 of 1942. The tower had stood in its wrecked state since 
 the tornado of 1860, or for a period of eighty-two years. 
 As Mr. Mathews had suggested this work, he accordingly 
 very generously provided the funds for it. The design of 
 the top of this tower was naturally given much thought 
 and study by the architect. The original design of the 
 tower as built in 1856 was well known. The lithograph 
 showing the panoramic view of Alton in I860 clearly 
 shows the original design. In most cases of restoration, 
 it would be just less than an act of sacrilege to depart 
 radically from the original design, if the original design 
 were known. In the rebuilding of the tower of St. Paul's 
 a number of conditions were encountered that ordinarily 
 do not exist, but which in this instance caused the departure 
 from the original design. 
 
 The top of the tower as originally built was not the best 
 of Gothic design. Here, as in the large window over the 
 front door, the architect of the rebuilt church again seemed 
 to have erred. The top of the tower had stood for only 
 four years, from 1856 to I860, and in no sense had become 
 a landmark nor acquired any historic value. The base of 
 this tower is only fourteen feet wide, yet the original tower 
 was approximately sixty-five feet in height and ended with 
 arched openings and pinnacles. The fact that the top of 
 this tower was blown off during the tornado of 1860 while 
 most of the walls of the church stood is evidence that the 
 structural design of the top of the tower was not sound. 
 An examination of the walls of the tower indicated that it 
 would have been unwise to have raised the tower in stone 
 to its original height. The design which was worked out 
 
82 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 and built appeared to be the most logical design to adopt. 
 About six feet of stonework of the top of the walls was 
 taken down and rebuilt, and about eight feet of additional 
 stonework was built and finished off with battlements; out 
 of this stonework was raised the octagonal wooden spire 
 surmounted by a metal cross gilded with gold leaf. The 
 tower as it now stands is amply high for its narrow base 
 width and conforms to the simple Gothic of the main body 
 of the church. 
 
 The east tower which in reality is a false tower, inasmuch 
 as, only the south and east walls are of stone, was originally 
 finished off with a Gothic balustrade which in time had 
 gone to pieces, and only the end piers stood. It was 
 thought wise to rebuild the top of this tower with solid 
 masonry and accordingly the work was so done. 
 
 The conversion of the east tower room into the baptistry 
 consisted of putting in a floor slab of reinforced concrete, 
 the vaulted ceiling, the new window in the east wall, the 
 tile floor, the wrought iron gates and the painting of the 
 walls. The decoration is the work of Mr. Raymond Mat- 
 teuzzi of St. Louis. The baptistry was given by Mrs. Vio- 
 lette Joesting in memory of her daughter, Miss Martha Lee 
 Joesting. The baptismal font was given to St. Paul's about 
 forty years ago by Mrs. Charles Fletcher Sparks. The small 
 peace chapel in the west tower was given by Miss Amelia 
 Reck in memory of her sisters. 
 
 The choir loft, or balcony, over the front vestibule was 
 opened up and enlarged by projecting it out into the nave. 
 The Franklin W. Olin, Jr. Memorial Organ which orig- 
 inally was in the front of the church, was increased greatly 
 in size and in performance and placed in the balcony, the 
 cost being borne by Mrs. Franklin W. Olin and Mr. Spen- 
 cer T. Olin. 
 
 The sanctuary was widened and made deeper by moving 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 83 
 
 the sanctuary arch out into the nave. The floor of the sanc- 
 tuary was laid in Moravian tile. The pulpit was moved 
 back and against the front wall of the nave and a canopy 
 placed over it. The window over the altar was removed 
 and the wall made solid to form a background for the cru- 
 cifix given by Mr. Robert Levis II in memory of his 
 mother, Mrs. Frances Levis. The communion rail was made 
 the width of the nave and was moved out so as to allow 
 freer passage behind it. 
 
 The changes made to the old church in 1942 turned it 
 into a modern structure. Its plan now contains all the fea- 
 tures necessary for conducting the services; but there is, 
 however, still much work to be done before the edifice is 
 completely restored to its original beauty. This work must 
 wait until the present war is over but the hope of complete 
 restoration should not be abandoned. The State of Illinois 
 has made a proud record in the restorations of its historic 
 monuments. New Salem, Fort Chartres and Jubilee are 
 examples of what has been done. The thousands of visi- 
 tors that these places attract each year are evidence of their 
 value to their communities. 
 
 The complete restoration of St. Paul's calls for two 
 major building operations, the restoration of the open roof 
 and the replacement of the old wooden frames in the side 
 windows of the nave with Bedford stone frames with cen- 
 tral mullions. Nothing will add more beauty or more 
 interest to the old church than the restoration of the open 
 roof. It will be recalled that an open roof was one of the 
 features definitely called for in the architectural competi- 
 tion program, and that as soon as the new church was com- 
 pleted in 1857 Bishop Whitehouse and the Rev. Dr. Mc- 
 Masters referred repeatedly with pride to its open roof. 
 When the work of restoration is again taken up, probably 
 the first and the most necessary work to do will be the 
 
84 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 replacement of the wooden frames in the side windows of 
 the nave. 
 
 The replacement of the wooden frames and the restora- 
 tion of the open roof will be costly operations. To accom- 
 plish this will call for bold resolute initiative such as char- 
 acterized the men that made Alton in the 1 830*5, but with 
 the city today expanded far beyond the dreams of its found- 
 ers, with the city alive with industrial activity, with the 
 parish in its most flourishing state, it would not seem that 
 the complete restoration of the old church is too much for 
 which to hope. When we recall that in 1845, without a 
 rector, St. Paul's was able to purchase its first building and 
 within eleven years it was able to build the present struc- 
 ture, and again within four years was able to make the 
 extensive repairs necessary after the tornado of I860, this 
 work of complete restoration appears as a challenge from 
 the past to the present. 
 
 The RITUAL of ST. PAULS CHURCH 
 
 The structural changes that have been made to the edifice 
 are not the only changes that have taken place at St. Paul's 
 within the past two years; a very noticeable change has 
 come by way of the ritual and the ceremonial. In its cen- 
 tury and more of service St. Paul's has seen many changes in 
 its ritual. The first marked change occurred no doubt when 
 the new church in 1857 was opened for service; from then 
 on, by degrees and depending upon the rector in charge, 
 various innovations were introduced which served to pre- 
 pare the way for the highly perfected ritual as it is today 
 conducted under the direction and discipline of the Rev. 
 Father Whitford. During the past hundred years a marked 
 advance has taken place in the ritual and the ceremonial in 
 the Anglican communion. These changes have come about 
 largely through the efforts of Catholic-minded persons to 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 85 
 
 strengthen and deepen the devotional life of the church by 
 giving outward expression to the official beliefs and tenets 
 of the Church. If one of the members of the first vestry 
 of St. Paul's were to attend service in the church today, he 
 would find little change in the Prayer Book liturgy, but he 
 would scarcely recognize the accompanying ceremonial. 
 The service as conducted at the time of the Rev. James De 
 Pui was beautiful but plain. The priest vested, when serv- 
 ing at the altar, in a long white surplice, and in a black 
 gown when in the pulpit. The plan of an Episcopal church 
 of this era was more suitable for the service of some Protes- 
 tant demonination than for the expression of the Episcopal 
 liturgy. In most churches the pulpit was the important 
 feature of the interior; the altar was a plain table placed 
 in a shallow recess in the front of the nave and sometimes 
 was behind the pulpit. The descriptions which have been 
 found of the first St. Paul's correspond to the description 
 of the average church of the period. 
 
 The Protestant Episcopal Church had been founded upon 
 the framework of the Church of England as it existed dur- 
 ing the eighteenth century. The Church in America at the 
 time of its organization declared: ''this Church is far from 
 intending to depart from the Church of England in any 
 essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship," and as 
 late as 1814 it again affirmed: 'The Church conceives itself 
 as professing and acting on the principles of the Church of 
 England." The Church of England, however, during the 
 eighteenth century was not in a very healthy state. There 
 had been periods after the Reformation when it had sunk 
 so low that the Holy Eucharist was seldom celebrated. It 
 is true, these periods had been of short duration, but they 
 had left their indelible imprint upon the Church. This is 
 not to say that there were no good churchmen in England 
 during the eighteenth century; there were always a few 
 
86 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 bishops and priests who had held to the tenets and who 
 practiced some of the ceremony of ritual which was the 
 accepted order before the Reformation and who were 
 known as High Churchmen; but in general the Church of 
 England during the eighteenth century was distinguished 
 for its plainness and lack of forms. During the first quar- 
 ter of the nineteenth century, the Church in America had 
 a powerful advocate of more advanced churchmanship in 
 Bishop Hobart and it was largely through his influence that 
 the High Church party came into existence. The effort of 
 the High Churchman to establish more firmly the authority 
 and the fuller meaning of the Church was opposed by the 
 Evangelicals who being satisfied with the Church as it was, 
 believed that free and individual interpretation of the 
 tenets of the faith was desirable. Unfortunately this free 
 and individual interpretation had reached a point where 
 many careless and undesirable practices were permitted and 
 had caused many thoughtful men to realize that the Church 
 was susceptible of deeper devotional life. 
 
 In the 1830's a movement was started at Oxford Uni- 
 versity by serious students of the Church of England to 
 revitalize the Church. They believed that it was in danger 
 of decay and that it could be revitalized by bringing back 
 to it some of the tenets and practices that had existed 
 before the Reformation. This movement, which became 
 known as the Oxford Movement, within a few years was 
 to have a powerful influence upon the Church in both Eng- 
 land and the United States. There were likewise other 
 tendencies at work during this period which were to help 
 in the revitalization of the Church. One of these tendencies 
 had been planted in the United States by Bishop Chase, 
 although in doing so he was completely unaware of the 
 future consequences. When Bishop Chase planned the first 
 large building for Kenyon College and commissioned the 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 87 
 
 most famous American architect of his time, Charles Bul- 
 finch, to draw the plans, he informed him that he wished 
 the buildings designed in the Gothic style of architecture, 
 a style that was practically unknown in the United States at 
 the time. The published design for this building bears the 
 date 1826, and the words, "Designed and drawn by Rev. N. 
 Nash," which would indicate that the Bishop had had some 
 amateur or gentleman architect prepare the first sketches, 
 as was a frequent custom a century or more ago, before 
 calling in a practical architect; and while the design of the 
 Rev. Mr. Nash was far from being good Gothic, it was a 
 very creditable Gothic design to be produced in 1826. 
 Bishop Chase, on account of his difficulties at Kenyon, was 
 never allowed to complete this building above the first 
 floor, but in 1838, at Jubilee, he actually built many true 
 Gothic forms and details in his chapel there. The Gothic 
 style was soon to grow into favor and within twenty-five 
 years it had become the accepted style for an Episcopal 
 church. With the increasing interest in Gothic architec- 
 ture, the Gothic spirit was soon to have a telling effect 
 upon the Church. Men began to reflect upon the great 
 beauty of the Gothic churches with their once wealth of 
 brilliant color, and upon the pageantry of the ritual in use 
 in mediaeval times. The Oxford Movement had made the 
 Church aware that much of its most precious heritage, the 
 beauty, order and reverence in religious worship which 
 belonged to the Anglican Church as early as the third cen- 
 tury, while by no means lost, was not being used. 
 
 By 1840 the interest in Gothic culture and the influence 
 of the Oxford Movement had progressed so far as to cause 
 concern on the part of many Churchmen, inasmuch as, a 
 few of the churches had introduced some of these ancient 
 practices into their services. It was only natural that some 
 of the clergy would look upon these practices as objection- 
 
88 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 able innovations, and while these innovations were not to 
 reach the prairies of Illinois during Bishop Chase's life- 
 time, we know, nevertheless, that he viewed with alarm 
 their appearance in the churches in the eastern states. In 
 1842, in Reminiscences he wrote: 
 
 "When I came to the pure and primitive Protes- 
 tant Episcopal Church, I did not think I was en- 
 countering the opposite foe ... I thought I found 
 peace . . . because I believed her to be the chaste 
 bride of the King Messiah. And now if she lose 
 her character . . . whither, O wither shall I fly? 
 . . . My heart never sinks so low as when I think 
 of the change, the shameful change, in the once 
 beautiful countenance of my beloved Church of 
 England." 
 
 Referring to the celebrated Dr. Pusey he wrote: 
 
 "His being permitted to remain and to teach in 
 the Church of England is to me an enigma ... to 
 be in the Church with Romish sentiments is a 
 crime and as such should be punished." 
 
 These innovations consisted of the use of the vested 
 choir, the processional cross, candles on the altar, incense, 
 gorgeous vestments and greater reverence for holy things; 
 and besides many other details introduced to enrich the 
 services more plentifully and to make the beauty of holi- 
 ness apparent to all worshipers. The members of the clergy 
 who objected to these innovations were afraid that the 
 Episcopal Church was about to lose its identity and that 
 these practices would eventually lead the Church back to 
 Rome. For twenty years this question of ritual agitated 
 the Church, and at the General Conventions of 1871 and 
 1874, ritualism was the chief subject of debate. In 1874 a 
 canon was passed, somewhat as a compromise to appease 
 
ST. PAULS CHURCH, ALTON 89 
 
 the Evangelicals who at the time were displaying some evi- 
 dence of schism, which prohibited practically all of these 
 innovations. It was, however, a canon which obviously 
 could not be enforced, and as a matter of fact no attempt 
 was ever made to enforce it. While the action of the con- 
 vention represented only a contracted view, it was the 
 means of bringing forth an expression of opinion that the 
 Church was great enough and strong enough to include a 
 divergence of tenets and practices of ritual. 
 
 At the conventions of 1871 and 1874 a distinguished 
 theologian, the Rev. Dr. James De Koven, appeared as the 
 eloquent advocate of ritualism and while his pleading was 
 not sufficient to cause the delegates to vote in favor of these 
 practices, his pleading was destined in time to have a far 
 greater effect. In his exposition of the tenets held by the 
 Ritualists he denned in clear understandable terms their 
 concept of the Real Presence of Christ at the Holy Euch- 
 arist. His words were: 
 
 "I believe in the Real, Actual Presence of Our 
 Lord, under the form of bread and wine, upon the 
 altars of our churches. I myself adore, and would, 
 if it were necessary or my duty, teach my people 
 to adore, Christ present in the elements under the 
 form of bread and wine." 
 
 This doctrine was far different from transubstantiation ; 
 it was relieved of the objections which the Protestant mind 
 has always had to the doctrine of transubstantiation; at 
 the same time it gave all of the spiritual comfort of that 
 doctrine. The belief in the Real Presence was something 
 that the Episcopal mind had longed for, yet hesitated to 
 believe in. While this explanation had been expounded by 
 Wycliffe as early as the fifteenth century, the Rev. Dr. De 
 Koven's clear unmistakable words, backed by his genuine 
 
90 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 conviction and the deep spiritual refinement of his charac- 
 ter, were to become the accepted finality for the Episcopal 
 mind. 
 
 In time it became evident that the Ritualists had no 
 desire nor intention to return to Rome; their only desire 
 was to see the Church enriched with greater devotional life. 
 As this fact became realized, by degrees, one church after 
 another throughout the United States began to adopt some 
 of these innovations which once had been so greatly 
 feared. Today the prophecy made by Bishop Hopkins in 
 1867 that "Ritualism will grow into favor until it becomes 
 the prevailing system" has almost been fulfilled. 
 
 Of the practices advocated by the Ritualists, the use of 
 incense is probably the least common, yet it is difficult to 
 understand its rejection, inasmuch as, it is no more radical 
 than the use of candles on the altar. The use of incense 
 was divinely ordered in the Church of Israel; its use in 
 Christian churches was prophesied by Malachi; its use in 
 heavenly worship is told in The Revelations of St. John 
 The Divine; its use was general in the early Christian 
 Church; and it was used in some of the churches in Eng- 
 land long after the Reformation. A rite so universal and 
 one sanctioned by God is surely not to be set aside lightly. 
 
 In The Genesis of The American Prayer Book the Rt. 
 Rev. Bishop Seymour wrote: 
 
 "The Prayer Book is not only a poem, or an 
 oratorio from beginning to end, a choral song, and 
 a perpetual feast; it is not merely a well undefiled, 
 of our mother tongue, and, hardly excepting the 
 English Bible, the first standard and classic of the 
 language ... it is infinitely more/' 
 
 So glorious a heritage as is the liturgy of our Church, 
 it is in itself an injunction to our priests to conduct it with 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 91 
 
 correctness and precision so that its fullest meaning will be 
 brought out. Ever since the bishopric of Bishop White- 
 house the majority of the churches of Illinois have favored 
 High Church traditions. The sentiment of the Diocese of 
 Illinois towards ritualism was clearly shown in 1874 when 
 the diocese chose Bishop Seymour to be bishop; and after 
 the General Convention refused to confirm him, the High 
 Churchmanship of Illinois was still more emphasized by 
 the diocese next electing the Rev. Dr. De Koven bishop, a 
 choice that unfortunately was rejected by the Standing 
 Committees. Long before Father Chittenden's rectorship, 
 the vested choir was in use at St. Paul's; it was he, how- 
 ever, who first placed candles on the altar, and although 
 his tastes were plain in regard to vestments, fundamentally 
 he was a High Churchman; he heard confessions and 
 believed implicitly in the doctrines advocated by the Rit- 
 ualists. 
 
 Both Father Butler and Father Atchison were in com- 
 plete sympathy with the practices of the Ritualists and dur- 
 ing their rectorships the services at St. Paul's conformed to 
 the High Church traditions. The Mass as it is today said 
 at St. Paul's is as beautiful as in any church. Holding 
 steadfast to the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, 
 there has come to St. Paul's, by means of ceremonial en- 
 richment, an appealing sense of reverence and beauty. The 
 marked increase in church attendance, the response and the 
 reverence shown by the congregations at St. Paul's give 
 visible witness of the influence which the perfected ritual 
 has had upon the devotional life of the parish. There is 
 every reason to believe, if Bishop Chase were alive today, 
 that he would only smile over the fact that he once viewed 
 with alarm "the reform of the Reformation", as he was in 
 the habit of referring to the ritualistic movement, and that 
 
92 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 he would be a staunch supporter of the practices now in 
 use at St. Paul's. 
 
 The renewed activities and the increase in the devotional 
 life which one sees today at St. Paul's come not from the 
 work of any one rector; they spring from the traditions of 
 the past made possible by long years of devotion and serv- 
 ice, and that they portend a future of still greater service 
 there can be no doubt. 
 
 In looking back over the long past, the assistance of the 
 many sustaining helpers stands out vividly. It is a record 
 of work that belongs to no one particular period but rather 
 to the glorious traditions of St. Paul's which through good 
 and bad fortune have been carried on. 
 
 The music at St. Paul's has always been an important 
 part of its ritual and for a century has made St. Paul's 
 noted. The names of Dr. Rohland, Prof. Armstrong, 
 Messrs. Joseph Gratian, William Schweppe, John Topping, 
 Robert Smith, Alexander Zimmerman, George Rieder, Mrs. 
 Cora Dolbee Rohland, Mrs. Alexander McGuiggan and 
 Mrs. Ray H. McDow are all closely associated with the 
 musical work of St. Paul's. At one time Mr. Cresswold, an 
 Englishman with some considerable reputation as an organ- 
 ist, lived in Alton and played the organ in St. Paul's 
 Church. 
 
 Throughout the years St. Paul's has been the recipient 
 of many bequests in the form of money or memorials. The 
 names of Mr. Nelson Edwards, Mrs. Kate Keith Hayner, 
 Mr. Jacob Wead, Mr. John Strubel, Mr. J. H. Burrit, Mrs. 
 John J. Mitchell, Mrs. Charles Fletcher Sparks, Mr. and 
 Mrs. John Olin, Mr. and Mrs. George L. Levis, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Franklin W. Olin, Mr. Spencer T. Olin, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Harry B. Matthews, Jr., Mrs. Violette Jostring and Miss 
 Amelia Reck are long to be remembered for their devotion 
 and their generosity. 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 93 
 
 There are few congregations in our American cities that 
 have maintained their houses of worship on the same site 
 of their first church. Where this has occurred the congre- 
 gations at an early date had the wisdom to erect fine sub- 
 stantial buildings that were well conceived and well 
 planned and which on account of the beauty of their archi- 
 tecture, arose above the whims and the fancies of passing 
 years. Through their historic background these buildings 
 have endeared themselves not only to their congregations 
 but to the entire community. Ralph Adams Cram has writ- 
 ten: "An eternal style is founded upon the rock of pre- 
 cedent; an ephermal style is built upon the shifting sands 
 of a social vanity which denying the past makes possible 
 the present." Fortunate indeed it was for the congregation 
 and for the city of Alton that the original site of the first 
 St. Paul's was kept and that when the old church was 
 rebuilt in 1856 a noble Gothic structure was erected. For 
 one hundred and nine years the old church has stood high 
 up on Market Street Hill and looked down upon every 
 event of moment in the history of Alton. It watched that 
 odd crowd of adventurers, speculators and sound business 
 men that thronged the unmade streets during the 1830's; 
 it watched the citizens gather around its base at the market 
 house where the town celebrities were wont daily to meet; 
 it watched Daniel Webster step off the boat at the foot of 
 Market Street; its walls have echoed to the voice of Elijah 
 P. Lovejoy; and serving as a town hall it welcomed noted 
 speakers, lecturers, and ministers of the Gospel. In 1842, 
 at the foot of Market Street, Abraham Lincoln entered a 
 skiff and rowed over to Sunflower Island to meet General 
 Shields upon the field of honor. In 1858 it listened to the 
 voices of Douglas and of Lincoln as they closed their series 
 of debates upon a platform in front of the old city hall; 
 in the heyday of the river traffic, the old church saw hun- 
 
94 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, ALTON 
 
 dreds of steamboats dock at Alton; in 1844 it watched the 
 devastating waters of the greatest flood on record sweep 
 by; in 1849 it witnessed with concern the ravages of 
 Asiatic cholera; year after year, it had looked upon the 
 grim walls of the old penitentiary with its horrors, and as 
 time went on, and Alton grew and developed industrially 
 and culturally, the old church stood and continued to serve 
 its original mission and has now become Alton's first his- 
 toric monument. 
 
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