The Missionary District
In 1884 a young Episcopal priest named Gershom Mott Williams visited his uncle on Mackinac Island, officiating services on the island and in Cheboygan, while he was there. Williams had strong family ties to the area -- indeed he'd almost been born there. His father, commander of the fort on Mackinac Island, had been transferred to upstate New York just weeks before Williams was born in 1857.
He was a man of many accomplishments: a linguist, author, hymnologist, lawyer and authority on relations with the Swedish Church. He also had a great passion for missionary work. Before entering the priesthood in 1880 he had studied at Cornell University, travelled abroad, and worked as a bookkeeper. While studying law in Detroit he became involved with the Y.M.C.A. and through this and other religious activities he came to the study of theology and the ministry.
In 1885 Williams returned to the U.P. again, spending an extended vacation with his family in Ontonagon. He reopened services at Ascension Church in Ontonagon. He visited Houghton and even became a "missionary agent" for the diocese for a time. When the Diocesan Convention of 1891 designated the U.P. as a separate archdeaconry, Williams, then dean of All Saints Cathedral in Milwaukee, was named archdeacon as well as rector of St. Paul's in Marquette. He launched into his new jobs with great energy.
"Entering then upon the field," Williams recalled, "I found Ironwood, which had been founded by W. Ball Wright, vacant, Iron Mountain, where the General Missionary had been in charge, vacant, Ontonagon vacant ... and St. Ignace vacant."
Though part of the Diocese of Michigan until the 1930s, the founding of church work on Bois Blanc Island in the Straits of Mackinac deserves attention.
William Bulkley was the rector of St. James in Cheboygan and served small missions in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. He bought property in an area on the south side of the island, known as The Pines (Pointe Aux Pins), in 1893 for a summer home. He invited his friend and former roommate at Trinity College in Hartford, Paul Ziegler, who was rector of the Mariner's Church in Detroit, to buy property next to his.
As more cottages went up in The Pines, Bulkley and Ziegler began holding services at the amusement hall, adjunct to the local hotel. The two of them were the driving force behind the building of the Church of the Transfiguration, finished in 1905.
At the Diocesan Convention of 1892 The U.P. was designated a separate Missionary District. After two men were elected and declined the post of missionary bishop, the district was placed under the provisional charge of Bishop Davies. Williams continued as archdeacon.
In 1893, the Right Reverend Dr. Kendrick, Missionary Bishop of Arizona and New Mexico was asked by Bishop Davies to perform clerical duties during the summer months while, evidently, he was visiting the U.P. Kendrick's final report commented on the progress of the church in the peninsula.
"In the larger places that I have visited, the church has developed a substantial degree of strength, and in the smaller places there are very evident signs of life. It was a wise venture to set off this Northern peninsula as a Missionary District. There are large resources here, which will last for a long time to come. It is, and perhaps always will be, a Missionary field, and the work has been well commenced."
The same year of Kendrick's visit saw the organization of Zion Episcopal Church in the southern U.P. town of Wilson, which shared a church building with a Lutheran congregation.
The first Convocation of the new Missionary District was in Menominee in 1893. At that meeting it was clear that the Episcopal Church's presence had spread widely. In addition to the congregations already described, scattered communicants were reported at Whitefish, Iroquois, Sugar Island, Detour, Donaldson, Shunk, Pickford, Newberry, Seney, Trout Creek, Trout Lake, L'Anse, Pequaming, Kitchi, Ewen, Bessemer, Rockland, Flint Steel, Baraga, Chassel, Portage Entry, Sagola, Republic, Michigamme, Spur, Norway, Hermansville, Stephenson, Ingalls, Thomaston, Whitney, Dollarville.
In 1893 a severe economic Depression swept through the nation. This was the year Christ Church in the Copper Mining town of Calumet organized, though it was certainly "not an auspicious year to begin building a church."
" ... In all parts of the country there was a growing shift of populations away from small towns to large industrial cities. ... With industrialization came radical swings in the economy, an economy that had been faltering and sputtering since the Civil War," wrote James Berg, former Vicar of Christ Church, Calumet. (From "Christ Episcopal Church, Calumet Michigan, 1893-1993. A Centennial History" by James C. Berg) Particularly important for the Upper Peninsula's history, this was a Depression that would spark the organization of mining unions.
The Second Annual Convocation of the Missionary District was held at St. Paul's Church, Marquette on June 20, 1894 and the effects of the Depression were addressed by Archdeacon Williams in his speech:
"We have to report hard times in the churches of our iron mining towns. The times have been dull without failure in the lumber towns, and by contrast fairly good in the copper towns.
"...Church building has advanced. The new Christ Church, Calumet, is finished, occupied, and in good financial condition. The new St. Margaret's Chapel, South Marquette, is a memorial to the rector's daughter. The new church at Wilson, where we have an undivided one-half interest in the church and cemetery, is the most inspiring thing in the field."
It was also an era of mass immigrations. Williams admitted to being "greatly perplexed" by the large settlements of foreigners with strange customs and languages. Ethnic identity, personal identity, religious identity were all nearly the same thing. Calumet, for example, "was a community of astonishing ethnic diversity. Among its population in significant numbers were: Croatians, Austrians, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Finns, Cornishmen, Englishmen, Italians, Norwegians and Swedes. Each group had its own church." (Berg)
Still, the new Missionary District tried its best to participate in the "melting pot" ideal of America.
"An attempt was made this year to begin Swedish work," Archdeacon Williams reported. "An educated minister of the Church of Sweden entered the Church under the Rev. J. W. McCleary, and was at once, under a new canon, admitted deacon. He chose the field he thought most favorable to the work, and settled in Menominee. A considerable stipend was assigned to him. The rector of Grace Church gave him the use of the church building, and he afterward secured quarters in a building nearer the Swedish part of the town."
"Proof against some persecution by his former brethren, he was at last in other ways led to go back to the Lutheran Synod, and we have nothing to show for our experiment but a few receipted bills and some Swedish books."
The Early Diocese
The Upper Peninsula's status as a Missionary District did not last long. There was a great desire on the part of Archdeacon Williams, the clergy and other church leaders to organize their own diocese. Williams' sense of the territory being ignored or neglected is evident. His own "feeling that without a Bishop we had no fair prospect of a hearing before the Board of Missions" seems to have been widespread.
So at the District's 1895 convocation in Marquette the delegates organized a diocese, called it the Diocese of Northern Michigan, and elected delegates to the upcoming General Convention.
The General Convention refused to recognize the new organization, perhaps because they doubted the financial stability of the organization, and made them ask leave to reorganize. They granted the request. The convention also insisted that the new diocese be called the Diocese of Marquette.
Williams disagreed with these decisions, even a quarter-century later. "I am sure to this day," he wrote, "that the Canonists of the Convention were wrong in not recognizing the organization already made and am also sure that it is a mistake to name a diocese large in territorial extent after any small town, no matter how nice a town. The Bishop of Northern Michigan would be recognized anywhere in the Northern peninsula as bearing a name descriptive of everybody's bishop in the district. The Bishop of Marquette is merely a distinguished visitor from another town."
On Nov. 14, 1895, a special convention was held, and the diocese reorganized, adopting a Constitution, Canons and Rules of Order and then went on to elect a Bishop. G. Mott Williams was elected on the second ballot and he was ordained May 1, 1896 in Grace Church, Detroit.
William's tenure would last until 1919, when illness forced him to resign. It would be a time of great and continuous change in the diocese and the peninsula.
Looking out across the new diocese in the spring of 1896, Williams saw congregations from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds living in communities built around farming, mining, shipping or lumbering. The church buildings serving these communities also ran the gamut. "New stone churches have been built at Ironwood, Crystal Falls, Detour and Sault Ste. Marie. New brick churches at Houghton, Vulcan, Norway Munising and Ishpeming. New wooden churches at Manistique, Gladstone, Newberry, Harvey, Florida, Painesdale, Dollar Bay, Allouez, Ontonagon, Hancock and Moran. Two small concrete chapels, basement only but roofed in, were built at South Range and North Marquette. Log churches were built at Fairview, Spence Settlement and Flint Steel."
The economy continued to expand in some areas, but other parts of the peninsula sunk into decline. The church at Clifton -- the nearby Cliff Mine now played out and the town all but abandoned -- was unused by the time Bishop Williams first saw it. The first Episcopal church in the peninsula now stood as a testament to the bygone days of untapped veins of copper and uncut stands of timber.
"'...It had really been a fine building. No such materials could be found now. The timbers were heavy enough for a man-of-war. The outside was boarded straight up and down, white pine boards 16 feet long without a knot, and the whole interior a remarkable piece of panelling. We saved as much of it as we could."
Meanwhile, the Episcopal congregation in Ontonagon had also been troubled by a declining economy. The copper industry had gone dormant, while lumbering had begun. "Ontonagon was kept up by lumbering, farming, fruit growing and gardening," wrote Bishop Williams." ...Until the railroad came through one might almost as well have been in the Faroe Islands."
As the railroads made their ways across the peninsula they brought isolated communities closer and provided Bishop Williams with a means of visiting congregations in the diocese more easily. And by the late 1890s the diocese employed a chapel car -- apparently a gift to the diocese from the Northwest Railroad Co.-- to bring services to areas all along the rails.
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The chapel car, which Bishop Williams said "had considerable usefulness to the scattered people along the railroad," was of crucial assistance to the congregation at Ontonagon after fire swept the town in August, 1896. The church was destroyed, but Bishop Williams sent the chapel car to be parked on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad's side track near the Ontonagon depot. The Rev. W. A. Mulligan conducted services there until leaving the following December due to his wife's ill health.
While wrestling with the problem of how to fill the vacant clergy position in Ontonagon, Bishop Williams was visited in Marquette by William Poyseor, a man who would go on to play a major role in the diocese in the coming decades. Poyseor was a missionary for the Congregational Church in Kenton and Trout Creek, and had already constructed two churches. He made an application to become a Candidate for Orders in the Episcopal Church, and Williams thought him exactly the right person for the job of rebuilding the Ontonagon church. Poyseor did that, and much more.
Poyseor was ordained deacon and priest, built a new Church of the Ascension in Ontonagon on the foundation of the old (doing much of the work himself), officiated services at Rockland and the Victoria Mine and built a church and gathered a congregation at Greenland. After five years in the Ontonagon area he was put in charge of Iron County to do similar church-building work.
The hard times of the Depression of the early 90s didn't last for long. By1899 Bishop Williams was able to refer to the year as a prosperous one "in business circles." In fact, his worry was "whether we churchmen are going to be able to handle the increased work which this prosperity renders incumbent upon us."
"There is unquestionably a very large immigration coming into our peninsula. If the present difficulty in supplying the iron and copper market continues, we are going to have a very large population indeed. Furthermore, we have learned in the past few years to have confidence in the agricultural possibilities of our country. We can grow nearly everything in this peninsula that we can elsewhere in Michigan except Indian corn and peaches. So we are to gird up our loins to the care of the troops that are coming to us"...
Through the early period, the church continued to forge ties with other institutions, both outside and inside the U.P.
'"Northern Michigan Normal School at Marquette is going to increase the opportunities and responsibilities of the diocese and the Cathedral parish," reported Williams in 1899. "I hope to establish a small dormitory for church students, free of rent to those who will do a little church work. The twelve months school year will give some of our candidates and junior clergy a chance to get considerable educational privileges there, not equivalent to a college training, but nevertheless exceedingly important and valuable. I hope to have wisdom given me to influence also some of the many prospective students toward the church."
Before 1901, the diocese was supporting St. Luke's Hospital in Marquette, which was "carrying a heavy burden of charitable work." In 1901 the trustees of the diocese acquired a mortgage from the hospital and created a new fund to generate operating capital, on the condition that St. Luke's would "maintain a free bed for the use of a clergyman, or accredited missionary of the church, or a member of the clergyman's family.
Many families prominent in early church organizing were affiliated with one or another of the eastern mining companies that moved operations into the peninsula, and the church benefitted from these ties to industry. In Calumet "The Company" (the famed Calumet and Hecla Mining Company) "encouraged the establishment of churches. Perhaps it saw them as pacifying. Certainly an Episcopal church was a welcome addition to the community. It would provide a kind of spiritual "home away from home" for Calumet and Hecla employees on temporary assignment away from Boston and headquarters." (Berg)
In 1901, shortly after the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. located in Gladstone, Trinity Church was constructed. The designer of the church was one Thomas Noble, a superintendent of the wood department of CCI. The lot on which the church was built was donated by the Mason and Davis Lumber Mill. Also in 1901, property for a small chapel in Chocolay (Harvey) was donated by Peter White. In 1905 St. James the Less Church was built there as a parochial chapel of St Paul's Church in Marquette. The congregation was organized as a mission in 1948.
On Bois Blanc Island in the Straits of Mackinac ground was broken for the Church of The Transfiguration, the only church on the island in 1901. But progress was slow -- the only means of crossing the straits in those days were small sail vessels for passengers and freight. Material for the building arrived at a leisurely pace. The church was opened in 1905.
The Episcopal church at Nahma, St. Paul's, was built in1904 by the Bay de Noc Lumber Co., which promised it for the use of any Protestant denomination that would hold regular services. Up until 1951 various Episcopal clergy and lay readers conducted services for the few Protestants of the area. In 1951, the church was deeded to the diocese.
Later in the first decade of the century, the pace of new church building slowed. Missions in various remote parts of the U.P. continued and existing congregations worked on paying off mortgages, building rectories and making repairs. St. John's Church in Munising was one of the few new buildings erected during this time, built in 1907. The Bishop maintained a busy schedule of visits despite the difficulties in travel.
Bishop Williams began experimenting with new mechanized modes of travel in order to visit far-flung parishes. "I have been making some experiments with some modern auxiliaries," he told the 1907 convention in Escanaba. "The automobile is being tried out in this Delta County field. The initial expense was not much more than that of a good horse and driving equipment. The cost of maintenance is considerable, but not largely in excess of livery board and the efficiency is greatly multiplied. ...In the same way, the missionary launch, the 'P.T. Rowe' has proved effective."
Even as mechanization was bringing about great changes in transportation and industry across the country, it helped to precipitate the greatest labor unrest the Upper Peninsula has seen. As early as 1890 miners struck at the mines around Ishpeming, but no one in the peninsula had seen anything like the the Copper Country strike of 1913-14.
The strike was precipitated by the appearance on the mining range of the one-man air drill, which replaced heavy two-man drills that had been used for decades. The technological innovation carried a threat of layoffs. Combined with a newly active union movement spearheaded by the Western Federation of Miners, the new drill sparked the end of years of peaceful, if paternalistic, relations between labor and capital.
About 16,000 miners left their jobs, idling copper mines and mills, virtually halting copper production for a year. Rioting and violence resulted in the calling out of the state militia. Hundreds of mine "guards" were imported by the copper companies. At a Christmas Eve party for children at the Italian Hall in Red Jacket someone shouted "fire!" and 74 people, including 56 children, died in the ensuing panic.
Joseph Ten Broeck, long-serving rector of Christ Church in Calumet, headed the diocese's Social Service Commission, which kept Bishop Williams informed on the events of the strike. The commission made a report to the Diocesan Convention in 1914, blaming the strike on an "influx of large foreign population not yet absorbed in community life, minor grievances, inflammatory talk calculated to arouse class hatred, false promises" and "innate laziness" on the part of some strikers.
"No state law can prevent these outbreaks but the spirit of Christ in men's hearts," the report said. "...The Church should at all times preach right living and loyalty to the State, and strive to establish the Golden Rule as the one fundamental on which social justice can stand, without which the most utopian scheme is doomed to failure."
While the essentially conservative and pro-management tone of the commission's report shouldn't be surprising -- coming as it did from a church with strong ties to the business class -- the diocese did see a future role for the Church as the conscience of the employers.
"...In view of the fact that for some time to come in the Copper Country the employers will deal directly with the employees, there rests upon the Church the responsibility of impressing on the employer a large sense of his responsibility."
The strike ended in a stalemate, and the miners that stayed on in the Copper Country gradually straggled back to work. Then, just three months after the petering out of the strike, the first World War broke out.
While Europe plunged into chaos, a new wave of prosperity crested in the Keweenaw during the World War I era. The Great War brought new demand for brass shell casings, copper wire and other materials. In the iron range, new mines opened in Michigamme to meet wartime demand for steel.
In his convention address of 1918, Bishop Williams railed against the Germans. Portraying them as pagans, Williams noted "the Emperor of the Hun speaks often of god -- his god --, but never of Jesus Christ. The religion of the Hun war party there is not Christian."
However, he didn't see the conflict as a complete scourge: "A world benumbed by crass materialism, drunk with the love of gold, weakened by luxury and self-indulgence, contemptous of spiritual values, often mocking at the things of the soul, indifferent to God and the laws of God - this materialistic self-satisfied and self-sufficient civilization, has suddenly by the impact of this World War, been shaken to its very soul and is slowly coming to its senses. ...This was not an unmixed evil. It may become, under wise spiritual leadership, a great blessing."
By 1918, Bishop Williams' health had begun to deteriorate and he asked for assistance to help carry out his work. Chosen was Robert LeRoy Harris of Toledo, Ohio. He was ordained Bishop Coadjutor in Toledo in February, 1918 and came to the Upper Peninsula in February to spend the year traveling and getting to know the diocese.
By October, Bishop Harris had begun to note in his journal the spread of the great Influenza epidemic to the U.P. The deadly disease was striking many people, "threatening to close our church work," he wrote.
Throughout October and November, church services were cancelled by order of local boards of health. A notable exception was made on Nov. 17, when Harris celebrated a victory Sunday service to mark the signing of the Armistice ending World War I. The health authorities lifted the influenza ban on church services for the day.
The new coadjutor survived his own brush with the Influenza in December of 1918, spending a week sick in Marquette. In early January he succumbed again. Finally, in late January, "much weakened by racking cough and results of influenza," he was ordered south by his physician. He stayed in Florida until April when he was deemed healthy enough to return. The bout with the deadly disease does not seem to have slowed him down much. His journal entries for 1919 and 1920 show a series of incredible journeys and brushes with disaster.
Harris was journeying to visit the eastern end of the diocese with his son and William Poyseor on July 9, when they were trapped by forest fires near Engadine. "Drove through two blazing forests sucessfully," Harris wrote in his journal, "only to find ourselves held up by a fiercer fire in front of us. The country ablaze on three sides of us and woods on all roads on fire. ... We finally decide to drive through the fire ahead of us."
"We wrap the gasoline tank with canvas and soak it with water from small trout stream and pour water on top of car until thoroughly soaked. Then we make a dash for it into the blazing forest. The smoke is blinding and suffocating and heat almost unendurable. The woods are blazing on every side of us and trees are falling both sides of us, but fortunately none strike us or block the road completely. Drive car full speed over forest road ablaze on both sides. ... Just as I am reeling at the wheel, nearly overcome by heat, ashes and smoke, the car suddenly shoots out of the fire into safety. Lips, nostils and eyelids are blistered, but we joyfully thank God for our escape. Learn later two cars were burned up on the same road trying to run the gaunlet of fire."
Harris preached at St. Alban's Manistique but found the "church so full of smoke from forest fires could speak only with great difficulty."
In August he reported that he and his party nearly lost their lives in a raging Lake Superior storm on rocks off Agawa Island: "Finally, after hard struggle, made shelter of island and wait till night for storm to abate," he wrote. "At night, after rough trip, we succeed in driving boat through breakers to safety in Agawa River. 16 foot boat nearly swamped by heavy seas we shipped. Very thankful to reach safe haven again."
At the General Convention in October, 1919, after nearly a quarter century serving in the diocese, Bishop Williams submitted his resignation on account of his ill health. Bishop Harris was elected to replace him. While he had already withstood trial by fire and water, Harris prayed "May God give me strength, courage, wisdom and patience to carry on successfully the work of His Church. Amen."
