the parish's life powerfully, but other factors
-- undocumentable deeper yearnings --
would determine whether its life should begin
and how long it would last."
Christ Episcopal Church, Calumet Michigan, 1893-1993,
A Centennial History
The Diocese of
Northern Michigan :
A history of the first 100 years
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The Diocese of Northern Michigan was one hundred years old in 1995. In the little more than a century since 1895, the Upper Peninsula has been through a great deal: the wane of the copper mining and logging industries; the arrival and departure of the railroads; the influx of immigrants followed by the slow, steady decline of some thriving towns. Yet the diocese has continued as a vital community through all the changes.
It's true of the diocese -- as well as of the individual congregations which comprise it -- that the outer history of changing times and changing economies doesn't tell the whole story. But a look back over the events of the past century in and around the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan may shed some light on that inner story; show us a little about the inner life that has maintained it through the years.
The pre-history of the Diocese
In the early 1800s the still-young government of the United States knew little about the area now called the Upper Peninsula. Reports about the vast Michigan Territory that trickled back East were a mixture of wild speculation over the potential mineral wealth of the region and descriptions of its dismal terrain, insects and weather.
The federal government, searching for lands with which to give away as a reward to veterans of the War of 1812, sent surveyors to the wild country of what is now Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Edward Tiffin, a surveyor fom Ohio, wrote the following report to Washington in 1815:
"The surveyors in Michigan Territory have been obliged to suspend operations. ... They continued at their work, suffering incredible hardships, until both men and beasts were literally worn down with extreme suffering and fatigue. ... There would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand, that would admit of cultivation ... nor is it worth the expense of surveying it ... taking the country altogether so far as it has been explored ... it is bad." (Call it North Country. p41)
And Tiffin's teams had been surveying in the relatively hospitable northern Lower Peninsula. The land across the Straits of Mackinac must have seemed too far away to consider.
Remote as the frontier was, an Episcopal presence had already been established there. When the French surrendered their Canadian territory to the British in 1761, British outposts were established at Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac, first located in Mackinaw City, and later moved to Mackinac Island. Though documentation is sparse, British troops undoubtedly brought their Anglican tradition and the Book of Common Prayer with them to their remote outposts.
After the War of 1812 the Church of England continued ministering to people on both sides of the Canadian border. People from Sugar Island attended services in Garden River, Ontario, and the missionary there traveled as far as Detour.
One of the earliest ordained Episcopalians to minister in the Upper Peninsula was Eleazar Williams. He was one of two clergy listed as living in the entire Michigan Territory in 1829 -- which encompassed the present state of Michigan, all of Wisconsin and the northeastern part of Minnesota. Williams and the Rev. Richard Cadle were both living in Green Bay in 1929.
"Williams was an interesting person. He was native American, born into either the Mohawk or Oneida tribe (accounts vary) in Canada, near the New York border. He translated the Prayer Book into the Mohawk language and developed a spelling book. He served as a lay minister for several years and was ordained a deacon in 1826, undoubtedly the first Native American to be ordained." (Sam Hosler, Hiawathaland, June 1994)
Williams worked with the Ojibwa people of Mackinac Island during the early 1830s, and perhaps even in the late 1820s. After spending time in Green Bay and other parts of Wisconsin, he apparently returned to Michigan around the time the original Diocese of Michigan was created.
"At various times he served the church, farmed and served as a government agent to various Indian tribes. ...In his later years he moved to upstate New York. He laid claim to being the lost Dauphin of France, and a book was written supporting his claims. He had the reputation of being something of a scalawag, taking government money which was meant for the tribes he worked with. Yet he was forever in financial difficulty. Some of the complaints arising against him were, undoubtedly, grounded in racism." (Hosler, Hiawathaland, June 1994)
A young divinity student, William MacMurray, was sent as a missionary by the Governor of Canada to the Canadian side of the St. Mary's River and ministered to the Indians from 1832 through 1838.
In 1835 the Diocese of Michigan was organized, and after two earlier candidates refused, Samuel McCoskry became the first Bishop of Michigan. The Territory under his supervision included all of Michigan, Wisconsin and the Northeastern part of Minnesota.
It's not surprising that when Bishop McCoskry was elected there was "no thought of his supervising" the Upper Peninsula. (G.M. Williams, "The Diocese of Marquette, A History") In fact, the Lower Peninsula didn't want the Upper to be part of the soon-to-be state. What the Lower Peninsula coveted was the "Toledo Strip", a border area claimed by Ohio as well.
After a tense standoff known as the "Toledo War" -- the only casualty was a mule, shot during an argument -- Congress forced the U.P. on the reluctant Lower Peninsula in exchange for the renunciation of Michigan's claim to the strip. A disgruntled writer of the time called the U.P. "a wild and comparative Scandinavian tract -- 20,000 square miles of howling wilderness on the shores of Lake Superior." (Call it North Country, p.42)
Nonetheless, when it became a state in 1837 Michigan was stuck with the U.P. So was Bishop McCoskry, when the Diocese of Michigan's boundaries were made to conform to the new boundaries. The state census of 1837 listed less than 1,100 people in the Upper Peninsula.
An early Episcopal priest arriving in the north soon after statehood was Rev. John O'Brien, a U.S. Army chaplain who is known to have resided at Fort Mackinac in 1842.
1842 was also the year that the Indians ceded all their lands west of the Chocolay River near Marquette to the United States. Prospectors and settlers began to pour into the Keweenaw in search of copper -- drawn in part by the young, charismatic Douglass Houghton, the first state geologist, and an Episcopalian.
Houghton's scientific reports about the western U.P. drew mining prospectors toward Ontonagon and the Keweenaw -- two promising areas for copper mining development. Houghton drowned off of Eagle River in 1845 in a rush to survey an area that was rapidly being claimed and prospected before it had been adequately surveyed.
"There was yet no church organization (in the U.P.), but many of the early pioneers were churchmen. The writer's recollection of the Houghton family is that they were all Episcopalians. ... The active miners were nearly all Cornish, and many of them brought their English prayer books, as the writer has occasion to know." (G.M. Williams History)
The First Churches
The two early centers of mining were, not surprisingly, also the centers for church organization. Episcopal congregations organized in Ontonagon and the Keweenaw around the same time - 1853 or 54.
The Keweenaw Peninsula was first settled around Copper Harbor, at the very tip, but the discovery in August of 1845 of the rich Cliff Lode 20 miles south on the Eagle River sparked a rush to that area. The town of Clifton grew up around the mine. And Eagle River, with a new dock, roads, a stamp mill, warehouses and homes, was rivaling Copper Harbor as a Keweenaw boom town. At the same time, farther south, the discovery of the fabulously rich Minesota Mine near Ontonagon swelled that town to a city of 6,000 people.
Grace Church in Clifton, built in 1854-55 and consecrated in 1856, was the first Episcopal church in the Upper Peninsula. Strangely enough, the Keweenaw's apparent reputation as a haven for people suffering from tuberculosis -- "consumption" -- played a role in the early history of this parish. A founding member was Hervey C. Parke who came to the fledgling town because he was "threatened with consumption." Later Parke moved to Detroit where he founded the pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis. Similarly, the first rector of the church -- John Bramwell, a British immigrant -- moved to the Keweenaw looking for relief from the early stages of consumption. He didn't find it, dying in 1859 about a year after arriving.
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One of the early organizers of the parish in Ontonagon was James Burtenshaw, a young merchant who came to Ontonagon in the spring of 1851. In 1852, he and his fiancé, a summer visitor named Cornelia Hawley, could find no Episcopal priest in the U.P. to marry them. They were married by a justice of the peace with an Episcopal ceremony being read by a Methodist student.
Burtenshaw, along with one mining official named General Daniel Pittman, were instrumental in building the Church of the Ascension, the second Protestant church erected in that town. The congregation -- the oldest continuously still active in the diocese -- was organized in 1854 and the church, built of materials transported from Detroit on a chartered schooner, was consecrated in 1856.
Iron ore, meanwhile, had been discovered in the Marquette Range. Philo Everett, later one of the founders of St. Paul's Church in Marquette, started the first iron mine in 1846. But tremendous difficulties in transporting the ore slowed the exploitation of the iron range's resources, and settlement of the area was slow, too. Marquette's population was just 200 in 1852, the year money was finally approved for the canal at Sault Ste. Marie.
Even after statehood, mining discoveries, and the beginnings of settlement, the U.P.'s reputation as a remote and inhospitable wilderness persisted. When the Soo Locks were first proposed, politicians like Henry Clay in Congress scoffed at the idea of spending money on a what he called a "place beyond the remotest settlement of the United States, if not the moon." (Call It North Country. P113)
The first canal at Sault Ste. Marie was built in 1855 and the effect on the Upper Peninsula was like a dam bursting. Timber and minerals flooded out, and immigrants and development flooded in.
Marquette quickly became the leading port for shipping iron ore. In 1856 the town had 1,664 residents and the parish of St. Paul's was founded with "barely a handful of communicants." The congregation was small but influential, numbering among its members not only Everett but a young man named Peter White, one of the founding fathers of Marquette and at one time a postmaster, legislator, storekeeper, lawyer, insurance man and more. The first frame church was notable for an openwork spire, designed to offer less purchase for the vicious winds off Lake Superior. The present stone church was started in 1873.
Development continued apace in the Keweenaw, though the district still had a reputation for roughness and lawlessness. In July of 1860 a meeting was held at the Houghton Post Office building to work toward the establishment of an Episcopal church.
Only a few days later on July 17, the steamer Princess of Marquette came to Houghton for fuel, stopping only 40 minutes. Onboard was Bishop McCoskry, who "expressed great surprise at the prosperous appearance of the place and was much astonished to find out how important it was as a field for the work of the church." (Trinity Parish History by Ruth Gibson Butler, p.13) He said that if the people would give him a guarantee that a priest could be supported, he would send one immediately.
Nine people signed a paper guaranteeing $800 for support of a priest for Houghton and Hancock, and about three weeks later the Rev. Henry Banwell arrived on a Saturday evening, sent by the bishop. On Sunday, with the new congregation gathered for worship it was discovered that Banwell had departed for Marquette the night before, on the same boat in which he'd arrived. "The rough scene on Houghton's waterfront on a Saturday evening overcame all the pioneering spirit he had." (Butler, p.14)
The congregation organized anyway. While the rector of Grace Church in Clifton held occasional services in the Methodist Church, the vestry decided to build a church on land in Hancock donated by the Quincy Mining Co. The church was to be a joint venture between the Episcopalians and Congregationalists, but the building wasn't even finished when a quarrel broke out over whether the building should be dedicated as an Episcopal or Congregational church. At a vestry meeting in Oct., 1861, it was decided to move the new church across Portage Lake on scows.
According to a contemporary diarist "A contract was let to John Mills for moving the building. He moved it down the hill, loaded upon two scows, towed it across to the Houghton side and took it up the hill to the present church site and it was dedicated as an Episcopal church. By the time it was loaded on the scows it was so late Mills decided to leave it on the Hancock side overnight. During the night some wag nailed a sign over the door, reading 'Bound for Hell: for freight and passage apply to Honest John Mills.' " (Butler, p. 16)
During the 1860s and 70s the expansion of the Episcopal church kept pace with other developments in the U.P. The Civil war brought a boom to the iron range, and the cities of Ishpeming and Negaunee grew up around the mines there. Commercial fishing expanded and the great lumber boom in the eastern U.P. began.
In 1869, St. John's Church in Negaunee joined the Diocese of Michigan, following a decade where services were held in the "white house," the summer home of a wealthy citizen, Mr. James Reynolds. The present church -- the oldest continuously occupied Episcopal church in the U.P. -- was originally the Union Church, where all the Protestant people in the community held services. The gothic-style church was built in 1868 and transferred to St. John's in 1869.
A mission was started in Rockland, near Ontonagon, in 1877. Services were held occasionally in Ishpeming from 1872 through 1877, and Grace Church was built there in 1878. In 1877 St. Stephen's parish organized in the booming lumber town of Escanaba. Regular services started in 1878 at the Tilden House and Oliver House Hotels and other places until the first Episcopal church was built in Escanaba in 1884.
By 1880 there had been a great shift of population away from the early copper mining centers of the western U.P. There was no resident clergy at the Clifton Church after this date and there was a vacancy at Ontonagon that would last through 1883.
In the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula, the population boom that had accompanied the building of the Soo Locks collapsed after the work was finished in 1855. It wasn't until the 1870s and 80s that immigrant homesteaders began to arrive. A small Episcopal mission was established in Sault Ste. Marie in 1880 and a church was built in 1881.
St. Ignace became a mission in 1881 at a time when the town was changing rapidly. "The population hovered around 3,000. Pigs and cattle roamed the main street, prostitutes openly plied their trade, and 20 or more saloons did a brisk business seven days a week." (Margaret Peacock. Church of the Good Shepherd: A History (1882-1989)).
The Church of the Good Shepherd was built in 1882 near the booming Mackinac Lumber Company. It got so cold in the church in the dead of winter that choir members had to pass heated bricks around to keep their hands warm enough to hold the hymnals. Seven years later the congregation moved the church on skids -- during the winter, it is believed, over the ice, a mile from its original location.
After the outbreak of Civil War services had been halted for 10 years on Mackinac Island. But in1873 the congregation organized under the name of "Trinity Church." "The Bishop favored 'St. Peter's,' but an Army officer living in Buffalo promised to contribute $200 towards the building if the name of 'Trinity' were adopted. The proposal was accepted but the pledge is still unpaid." (From Hiawathaland, Jan., 1977)
There was trouble over where to put the church. According to Bishop McCoskry in 1875, the congregation would have been more prosperous if it had built "a floating Chapel in the clear waters which wash the pebbly shore of this beautiful Island, and change its location to meet the wishes of those who could not agree in selecting a spot on the land in which to place its solid foundations." (From Hiawathaland, Jan., 1977) But by 1882 the present church on Mackinac Island was built.
At Sault Ste. Marie in 1882 P.T. Rowe, a Canadian-born linguistic scholar and zealous missionary, was the rector. He also served a string of rural missions from Sugar Island to Bay Mills to St. Ignace. Rowe left the eastern U.P. in 1895 to become the first Bishop of Alaska.
In the southern and western U.P. the Church continued to expand. In 1881, a mission was organized in Menominee, a "polyglot town" with a large French-speaking population. A church was built in 1885. Episcopal services started in 1884 in Iron Mountain at the Brown Street School house though Holy Trinity Church wasn't built until 1890.
The 1880s saw the beginnings of the towns of Bessemer and Ironwood around the new Gogebic iron range. By the late 80s and early 90s they were rough-and-tumble mining towns. In Ironwood "hot controversy raged over proposals to reopen the 'variety theatres' which moralists had closed. ... The Methodist Temperance society held weekly meetings every Friday night in the church at Ironwood. ... But these were voices crying in the wilderness." (Call it North Country, p.184)
In this milieu, St. Paul's mission was formed in Ironwood in1889. When the stone church was consecrated there in 1897 the name was changed to The Church of the Transfiguration.
