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All Souls History
The
Modern Era:
Through
works of faith, ministers and lay leaders claim their places in
the annals of All Souls' history
The history
of recent times inevitably sorts itself into categories of living
memory, collections of documents and artifacts, all of which may
wait years for narration and interpretation. In our living memory
are the ministries of Walter Donald Kring and F. Forrester Church,
and for a few, Laurance Irving Neale. Among our documents are
the membership and minute books, the bulletins, sermons and orders
of worship. We have photos, oral history on tape and a video record.
Dr. Kring, minister emeritus, has written a three-volume
history of the church: Liberals Among the Orthodox, Henry Whitney
Bellows and Safely Onward. These, along with a nearly
complete collection of the books of all our ministers and some
of the works of the congregation, are stored in our Archives room
under the diligent and trained care of the members of All Souls'
Historical Society.
With the
perspective of distance, certain moments gather interest and importance.
The building of our present church in 1932, during the ministry
of Minot Osgood Simons, is certainly a significant point in our
institutional history. The move from Fourth Avenue and 20th Street
was planned as the 1920's were drawing to a close. Property was
purchased at 80th Street and Lexington Avenue; the old church
was sold.
Then the
Great Depression intervened. The buyer of the old church went
bankrupt and could not complete the mortgage. Suddenly, as the
economy was collapsing, the congregation owned two buildings,
each with a mortgage and the one no longer in a state to be occupied
and the other not ready to be used. And, at this point, George
F. Baker, the man who surely ranks among the wealthiest parishioners
ever to sit in our pews and who had served on our Board for 50
years, died. Fortunately, his son, also named George F. Baker,
who retained the family interest in the congregation, purchased
the old property and freed the congregation to focus on the building
of our current church. Among our artifacts is a plaque on the
north side of the sanctuary honoring (gratefully!) both men.
The very
year that the new church was completed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was elected president. In 1879, Henry Whitney Bellows had officiated
at the wedding of Sara Delano, whose family had been members of
All Souls for many years, at Algonac, their home on the Hudson
River. This nineteenth-century wedding might have passed unnoticed
except that Sara Delano and her husband, James Roosevelt, would
become the parents of a future president. The marriage certificate,
signed by Bellows, is on view at Hyde Park in a room near the
entrance to the Presidential home. Mildred Rahn, our deceased
financial secretary, whose father, Albert Williams, served as
sexton of the third church, remembers Sara Delano Roosevelt visiting
that church and asking to see the family pew.
While the
people, dates and events that make up the history of All Souls
are too many to be enumerated here, some deserve special mention.
In recent history, places in the annals of the century belong
to Sandra Mitchell Caron, who served as Moderator of the Unitarian
Universalist Association from 1977 to 1985, and to the Reverend
John Buehrens, our co-minister from 1987 to 1993, who is now serving
as president of the denomination.
The year
1985 may draw the attention of the future historian who examines
the continuing tradition of support for human dignity. This was
the year that 10,000 placards were placed in city buses and subways
with messages such as "AIDS is a human disease and deserves
a humane response." In 1991, All Souls received the Outstanding
AIDS Ministry award from the National AIDS Interfaith Network
for our early and wide-ranging efforts in support of women, men
and children with AIDS.
In 1919,
when the congregation celebrated its 100th anniversary, the speakers
included former President William Howard Taft, the most recent
Unitarian to be President of the United States. In 1919, he was
a professor of constitutional law at Yale and had not yet been
appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The bicentennial
of the congregation will be celebrated in November 2019.
By Mary-Ella
Holst, Director of Religious Education Emerita and member of All
Souls.
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The
Early Years
The
Middle Years
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