Huidekoper had the satisfaction, in the later years of his life, of
seeing a respectable society worshipping in the tasteful building
which he loved and of witnessing the prosperity of the theological
school in which he was so much interested. We have never known any
one who seemed to live so habitually in the presence of God. The form
which his piety mostly took was that of gratitude and reliance. His
trust in the Divine goodness was like that of a child in its mother.
His cheerful views, of this life and of the other, his simple tastes,
his enjoyment of nature, his happiness in society, his love for
children, his pleasure in doing good, his tender affection for those
nearest to him,--these threw a warm light around his last days and
gave his home the aspect of a perpetual Sabbath. A well-balanced
activity of faculties contributed still more to his usefulness and
happiness. He was always a student, occupying every vacant hour with
a book, and so had attained a surprising knowledge of biography and
history." Mr. Huidekoper died in Meadville, May 22, 1854.
[3] John M. Merrick, afterwards settled in Hardwick and Walpole, Mass.,
who was in Mr. Huidekoper's family from October, 1825, to October,
1827. He was succeeded by Andrew P. Peabody, who did not preach. In
1828-30 Washington Gilbert, who had settlements in Harvard, Lincoln,
and West Newton, was the tutor and preacher.
[4] Rev. George Nichols, July, 1831, to July, 1832; Rev. Alanson Brigham,
who died in Meadville, August 24, 1833; Rev. John Quincy Day,
October, 1834, to September, 1837.
[5] A.P. Peabody, Harvard Reminiscences, 165, 166
[6] The first treasurer of the school was Edgar Huidekoper, who was
succeeded by Professor F. Huidekoper, and he in turn by Edgar
Huidekoper, the son of the first treasurer. Among the other generous
friends and benefactors of the school have been Alfred Huidekoper,
Miss Elizabeth Huidekoper, and Mrs. Henry P. Kidder.
XV.
UNITARIAN PHILANTHROPIES.
The liberal movement in religion was characterized in its early period by
its humanitarianism. As theology grew less important for it, there was an
increase in its philanthropy. With the waning of the sectarian spirit there
was a growth in desire for practical reforms. The awakened interest in man
and enlarged faith in his spiritual capacities showed itself in efforts to
improve his social condition. No one expressed this tendency more perfectly
than Dr. Channing, though he was a spiritual teacher rather than a reformer
or philanthropist.
Any statement concerning the charities in connection with which Channing
was active will give the most inadequate idea of his actual influence in
this direction. He was greatly interested in promoting the circulation of
the Bible, in aiding the cause of temperance, and in bringing freedom to
the slave. His biographer says that his thoughts were continually becoming
concentrated more and more upon the terrible problem of pauperism, "and he
saw more clearly each year that what the times demanded was that the axe
should be laid at the very root of ignorance, temptation and strife by
substituting for the present unjust and unequal distribution of the
privileges of life some system of cordial, respectful brotherly
co-operation."[1] His interest in education was most comprehensive, and
he sought its advancement in all directions with the confident faith that
it would help to uplift all classes and make them more truly human.[2]
[Sidenote: Unitarian Charities.]
The liberals of New England, in the early years of the nineteenth century,
were not mere theorizers in regard to human helpfulness and the application
of Christianity to life; for they endeavored to realize the spirit of
charity and service. Largely under their leadership the Massachusetts Bible
Society was organized in 1809. A more distinctly charitable undertaking was
the Fragment Society, organized in 1812 to help the poor by the
distribution of garments, the lending of bedding to the sick and clothes to
children in charity schools, as well as the providing of such children with
shoes. This society also undertook to provide Bibles for the poor who had
none. Under the leadership of Rev. Joseph Tuckerman, then settled in
Chelsea, there was organized, May 11, 1812, the Boston Society for the
Religious and Moral Improvement of Seamen, "to distribute tracts of a
religious and moral kind for the use of seamen, and to establish a regular
divine service on board of our merchant vessels." In 1813 the Massachusetts
Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, in 1815 the Massachusetts
Peace Society, and at about the same time the Society for the Employment of
the Poor came into existence.
Of the early Unitarians Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham justly said: "They all
had a genuine desire to render the earthly lot of mankind tolerable. It is
not too much to say that they started every one of our best secular
charities. The town of Boston had a poor-house, and nothing more until the
Unitarians initiated humane institutions for the helpless, the blind, the
insane. The Massachusetts General Hospital (1811), the McLean Asylum for
the Insane (1818), the Perkins Blind Asylum (1832), the Female Orphan
Asylum (1800), were of their devising."[3] What this work meant was well
stated by Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, when he said there was "probably no city
in the world where there had been more ample provision for the poor than in
Boston, whether by private alms-giving, benevolent organizations, or public
institutions."[4] Nor was this altruistic spirit manifested alone in
Boston, for Mr. Frothingham quotes the saying of a lady to Dr. E.E. Hale:
"A Unitarian church to you merely means one more name on your calendar. To
the people in this town it means better books, better music, better
sewerage, better health, better life, less drunkenness, more purity, and
better government."[5] The Unitarian conception of the relations of
altruism and religion was pertinently stated by Dr. J.T. Kirkland,
president of Harvard College during the early years of the nineteenth
century, when he said that "we have as much piety as charity, and no
more."[6] One who knew intimately of the work of the ministry at large
has truly said of the labors of Dr. Tuckerman: "From the beginning he had
the moral and pecuniary support of the leaders of life in Boston; her first
merchants and her statesmen were watching these experiments with a curious
interest, and although he was often so radical as to startle the most
conservative notions of men engaged in trade, or learned in the
old-fashioned science of government, there was that in the persistence of
his life and the accuracy of his method which engaged their support."[7]
Another instance of Unitarian philanthropy is to be found in the support
given to Rev. Edward T. Taylor, usually known as "Father Taylor," in his
work for sailors. When he went to Boston in 1829 to begin his mission, the
first person he visited was Dr. Channing, and the second Ralph Waldo
Emerson, then a settled pastor in the city. Both of these men made generous
contributions to his mission, and aided him in securing the attention of
wealthy contributors.[8] In fact, his Bethel was almost wholly supported
by Unitarians. For thirty years Mr. Albert Fearing was the president of the
Boston Port Society, organized for the support of Taylor's Seamen's Bethel.
The corresponding secretary was Mr. Henry Parker. Among other Unitarian
supporters of this work was Hon. John A. Andrew.[9]
We have no right to assume that the Unitarians alone were philanthropic,
but they had the wealth and the social position to make their efforts in
this direction thoroughly effective.[10] That the results were beneficent
may be understood from the testimony of Mrs. Horace Mann. "The liberal
sects of Boston," she wrote to a friend, "quite carried the day at that
time in works of benevolence and Christian charity. They took care of the
needy without regard to sectarianism. Such women as Helen Loring and
Elizabeth Howard, (Mrs. Cyrus A. Bartol), Dorothea Dix, Mary Pritchard
(Mrs. Henry Ware), and many others less known to the world, but equally
devoted to the work, with many youthful coadjutors, took care of the poor
wonderfully."[11] After spending several weeks in Boston in 1842, and
giving careful attention to the charities and philanthropies of the city,
Charles Dickens wrote: "I sincerely believe that the public institutions
and charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect as the
most considerate wisdom, benevolence, humanity, can make them. I never in
my life was more affected by the contemplation of happiness, under
circumstances of privation and bereavement, than in my visits to these
establishments."[12]
[Sidenote: Education of the Blind.]
The pioneer in the work of educating the blind and the deaf was Dr. Samuel
G. Howe, who had been one of those who in 1824 went to Greece to aid in the
establishment of Greek independence. On his return, in 1832, he became
acquainted with European methods of teaching the blind; and in that year he
opened the Massachusetts School and Asylum for the Blind, "the pioneer of
such establishments in America, and the most illustrious of its class in
the world."[13] In his father's house in Pleasant Street, Dr. Howe began
his school with a few pupils, prepared books for them, and then set about
raising money to secure larger facilities. Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, of
Boston, gave his house in Pearl Street, valued at $50,000, on condition
that a like sum should be contributed for the maintenance of the school. In
six weeks the desired sum was secured, and the school was, afterwards known
as the Perkins Institution for the Blind. Dr. Howe addressed seventeen
state legislatures on the education of the blind, with the result of
establishing schools similar to his own. His arduous task, however, was
that of providing the blind with books; and he used his great inventive
skill in perfecting the necessary methods. He succeeded in making it
comparatively easy to print books for the blind, and therefore made it
possible to have a library of such works.
In the autumn of 1837 Dr. Howe discovered Laura Bridgman, who had only the
one sense of touch remaining in a normal condition; and his remarkable
success, in her education made him famous. In connection with her and other
pupils he began the process of teaching the deaf to use articulate speech,
and all who have followed him in this work have but extended and perfected
his methods. While teaching the blind and deaf, Dr. Howe found those who
were idiotic; and he began to study this class of persons about 1840, and
to devise methods for their education. As a member of the Massachusetts
legislature in 1846, he secured the appointment of a commission to
investigate the condition of the idiotic; and for this commission he wrote
the report. In 1847, the state having made an appropriation for the
teaching of idiotic, children, ten of them were taught at the Blind Asylum,
under the care of Dr. Howe. In 1851 a separate school was provided for such
children.
Dr. Howe was called "the Massachusetts philanthropist," but his
philanthropy was universal in its humanitarian aims. He gave large and
faithful attention, in 1845 and later, to prisons and prisoners; he was a
zealous friend of the slave and the freedman; and in 1864 he devoted
arduous service to the reform of the state charities of Massachusetts. His
biographer justly says of his spirit of universal philanthropy: "He joined
in the movement in Boston which abolished imprisonment for debt; he was an
early and active member of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, which once
did much service; and for years, when interest in prison reform was at a
low ebb in Massachusetts, the one forlorn relict of that once powerful
organization, a Prisoner's Aid Society, used to hold its meetings in Dr.
Howe's spacious chamber in Bromfield Street. He took an early interest in
the care of the insane, with which his friends Horace Mann, Dr. Edward
Jarvis, and Dorothea Dix were greatly occupied; and in later years he
introduced some most useful methods of caring for the insane in
Massachusetts. He favored the temperance reform, and wrote much as a
physician on the harm done to individuals and to the human stock by the use
of alcoholic liquors. He stood with Father Taylor of the Seamen's Bethel in
Boston for the salvation of the sailors and their protection from cruel
punishments, and he was one of those who almost abolished the flogging of
children in schools. During his whole career as a reformer of public
schools in New England, Horace Mann had no friend more intimate or helpful
than Dr. Howe, nor one whose support was more indispensable to Mann
himself."[14]
Dr. Howe was an attendant upon the preaching of Theodore Parker, and was
his intimate friend. In after years he was a member of the congregation of
James Freeman Clarke at the Church of the Disciples. "After our return to
America," says Mrs. Howe of the year 1844, "my husband went often to the
Melodeon, where Parker preached until he took possession of the Music Hall.
The interest which my husband showed in these services led me in time to
attend them, and I remember as among the great opportunities of my life the
years in which I listened to Theodore Parker."[15]
[Sidenote: Care of the Insane.]
Another among the many persons who came under the influence of Dr. Channing
was Dorothea Dix, who, as a teacher of his children, lived for many months
in his family and enjoyed his intimate friendship. Her biographer says:
"She had drunk in with passionate faith Dr. Channing's fervid insistence on
the presence in human nature, even under its most degraded types, of germs,
at least, of endless spiritual development. But it was the characteristic
of her own mind that it tended not to protracted speculation, but to
immediate, embodied action."[16] Her work for the insane was the
expression of the deep faith in humanity she had been taught by Channing.
When she entered upon her humanitarian efforts, but few hospitals for the
insane existed in the country. A notable exception was the McLean Asylum at
Somerville, which had been built as the result of that same philanthropic
spirit that had led the Unitarians to establish the many charities already
mentioned in these pages. In March, 1841, Miss Dix visited the House of
Correction in East Cambridge; and for the wretched condition of the
inmates, she at once set to work to provide remedies. Then she visited the
jails and alms-houses in many parts of the state, and presented a memorial
to the legislature recounting what she had found and asking for reforms.
She was met by bitter opposition; but such persons as Samuel G. Howe, Dr.
Channing, Horace Mann, and John G. Palfrey came to her aid. The bill
providing for relief to the insane came into the hands of a committee of
which Dr. Howe was the chairman, and he energetically pushed it forward to
enactment. Thus Miss Dix began her crusade against an enormous evil.
In 1845 Miss Dix reported that in three years she had travelled ten
thousand miles, visited eighteen state penitentiaries, three hundred jails
and houses of correction, and five hundred almshouses and other
institutions, secured the establishment or enlargement of six hospitals for
the insane, several county poorhouses, and several jails on a reformed
plan. She visited every state east of the Rocky Mountains, and also the
British Provinces, to secure legislation in behalf of the insane. She
secured the erection of hospitals or other reformatory action in Rhode
Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland. Her labors also secured the establishment of a hospital for
the insane of the army and navy, near Washington. All this was the work of
nine years.
In 1853 Miss Dix gave her attention to providing an adequate life-saving
equipment for Sable Island, one of we most dangerous places to seamen on
the Atlantic coast; and this became the means of saving many lives. In 1854
she went to England for needed rest; but almost at once she took up her
humanitarian work, this time in Scotland, where she secured a commission of
inquiry, which in 1857 resulted in reformatory legislation on the part of
Parliament. In 1855 she visited the island of Jersey, and secured great
improvements in the care of the insane. Later in that year she visited
Switzerland for rest, but in a few weeks was studying the charities of
Paris and then those of Italy. In Rome she had two interviews with the
pope, and the erection of a new hospital for the insane on modern
principles resulted. Speaking only English, and without letters of
introduction, she visited the insane hospitals and the prisons of Greece,
Turkey, Austria, Sclavonia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
Holland, and Belgium. "Day by day she patiently explored the asylums,
prisons, and poor-houses of every place in which she set her foot, glad to
her heart's core when she found anything to commend and learn a lesson
from, and patiently striving, where she struck the traces of ignorance,
neglect, or wrong, to right the evil by direct appeal to the highest
authorities."
On her return home, in September, 1856, she was met by many urgent appeals
for help in enlarging hospitals and erecting new ones; and she devoted her
time until the outbreak of the civil war in work for the insane in the
southern and middle north-western states. As soon as the troops were
ordered to Washington, she went there and offered her services as a nurse,
and was at once appointed superintendent of women nurses for the whole
army. She carried through the tasks of this office with energy and
devotion. In 1866 she secured the erection of a monument to the fallen
soldiers in the National Cemetery, at Hampton.
Then she returned at once to her work in asylums, poorhouses, and prisons,
continuing this task until past her seventy-fifth year. "Her frequent
visits to our institutions of the insane now, and her searching
criticisms," wrote a leading alienist, "constitute of themselves a better
lunacy commission than would be likely to be appointed in many of our
states."[17] The last five years of her life were spent as a guest in the
New Jersey State Asylum at Trenton, it being fit that one of the thirty-two
hospitals she had been the means of erecting should afford her a home for
her declining years.
Miss Dix was called by many "our Lady," "our Patron Saint"; and well she
deserved these expressions of reverence. President Fillmore said in a
letter to her, "Wealth and power never reared such monuments to selfish
pride as you have reared to the love of mankind." She had the unreserved
consecration to the needs of the poor and suffering that caused her to
write: "If I am cold, they are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if
I am alone, they are abandoned."[18] Her biographer justly compares her
with the greatest of the saints, and says, "Precisely the same
characteristics marked her, the same absolute religious consecration, the
same heroic readiness to trample under foot the pains of illness,
loneliness, and opposition, the same intellectual grasp of what a great
reformatory work demanded."[19] Truly was it said of her that she was "the
most useful and distinguished woman America has produced."[20]
[Sidenote: Child-saving Missions.]
As was justly said by Professor Francis G. Peabody, "the Boston Children's
Mission was the direct fruit of the ministry of Dr. Tuckerman, and
antedates all other conspicuous undertakings of the same nature. The first
president of the Children's Mission, John E. Williams, a Unitarian layman,
moved later to New York, and became the first treasurer of the newly
created Children's Aid Society of that city, formed in 1853. Thus the work
of the Children's Mission and the kindred service of the Warren Street
Chapel, under the leadership of Charles Barnard, must be reckoned as the
most immediate, if not the only American antecedent, of the great modern
works of child-saving charity."[21]
The Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute grew out of the
work of the Howard Sunday-school, then connected with the Pitts Street
Chapel. When several men connected with that school were discussing the
fact that a great number of vagrant children were dealt with by the police,
Fanny S. Merrill said to her father, Mr. George Merrill, "Father, can't we
children do something to help those poor little ones?" This question
suggested a new field of work; and a meeting was held on April 27, 1849,
under the auspices of Rev. Robert C. Waterston, to consider this
proposition. On May 9 the society was organized "to create a special
mission to the poor, ignorant, neglected children of this city; to gather
them into day and Sunday schools; to procure places and employment for
them; and generally to adopt and pursue such measures as would be most
likely to save or rescue them from vice, ignorance and degradation." In the
beginning this mission was supported by the Unitarian Sunday-schools in
Boston, but gradually the number of schools contributing to its maintenance
was enlarged until it included nearly all of those connected with Unitarian
churches in New England.
As soon as the mission was organized, Rev. Joseph E. Barry was made the
missionary; and he opened a Sunday-school in Utica Street. Beginning in
1853, one or more women were employed to aid him in his work. In May, 1857,
Rev. Edmund Squire began work as a missionary in Washington Village; but
this mission was soon given into the hands of the Benevolent Fraternity. In
June, 1858, Mr. B.H. Greene was engaged to visit the jail and lockup in aid
of the young persons found there. In 1859 work was undertaken in East
Boston, and also in South Boston. From this time onward from three to five
persons were constantly employed as missionaries, in visiting throughout
the city, persuading children to attend day-schools, sewing-schools, and
Sunday-schools, securing employment for those old enough to labor, and in
placing children in country homes. In April, 1857, Mr. Barry took a party
of forty-eight children to Illinois; and five other parties followed to
that state and to Michigan and Ohio. Since 1860 homes have been found in
New England for all children sent outside the city.
In November, 1858, a hall in Eliot Street was secured for the religious
services of the mission, which included boys' classes, Sunday-school, and
various organizations of a moral and intellectual character. In 1859 a
house was rented in Camden Street especially for the care of the boys who
came under the charge of the mission. In March, 1867, was completed the
house on Tremont Street in which the work of the mission has, since been
carried on. An additional building for very young children was provided in
October, 1890. For years Mr. Barry continued his work as the missionary of
this noble ministry to the children of the poor. Since 1877 Mr. William
Crosby has been the efficient superintendent, having served for eighteen
years previously as the treasurer. The mission has cared for more than five
thousand children.
[Sidenote: Care of the Poor.]
It has been indicated already that much attention was given to the care of
the poor and to the prevention of pauperism. It is safe to assume that
every Unitarian minister was a worker in this direction. It is well to
notice the efforts of one man, because his work led to the scientific
methods of charitable relief which are employed in Boston at the present
time. When Rev. Ephraim Peabody became the minister of King's Chapel, in
1846, he turned his attention to the education of the poor and to the
prevention of pauperism. In connection with Rev. Frederick T. Gray he
opened a school for those adults whose education had been neglected.
Especial attention was given to the elementary instruction of emigrant
women. Many children and adults accepted the opportunity thus afforded, and
a large school was maintained for several years.