Sites Associated with James McCune Smith and Family in New York City #7
St Philip’s Episcopal Church
From the site of the Smith family home at 29 Leonard Street, I headed back east to the intersection of Leonard, Varick St, and West Broadway. I headed north on West Broadway about two-thirds of a block up and photographed a lot on the east side of the street where I thought his pharmacy stood for a time. But as I started to do in-depth research, I found that McCune Smith did not move his pharmacy, as I had thought from a change of address in the 1840’s and for other reasons. Rather, the street numbers had simply changed. So, I put that research aside; we’ll consider it when I get to the correct location, which I visited later.
I went back down to Leonard and headed east until I reached Centre Street, then turned right. On the west side of the street between Leonard and Worth Street (formerly Anthony Street) is the site where St Philip’s Episcopal Church was located from 1819 until 1856. Though I’ve been looking, I haven’t yet been able to find an image of the Centre St church. I have been able find contemporary descriptions, though. The first iteration of St Philip’s, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1818, was ‘a wooden edifice of sixty feet by fifty, and thirty-six feet from the ground to the eaves; the basement being six feet above the ground, [is] calculated to afford accommodations for instruction. The church has galleries on both sides and in front, and contains altogether one hundred and forty-four pews.’[1]
Sadly, that first church burned down only two and a half years later, while parishioners were decorating it for Christmas on the night of 18 December 1821. However, Williams had wisely taken out insurance on the building, and the new church had been fully rebuilt within one year. The new building, though built on the same foundations, was larger, and this time built of fire-resistant brick. It was simple but handsome, ‘characterized by simplicity, good taste, and economy,’ as another contemporary article said.[2]
St Philip’s was McCune Smith’s parish for most of his life. It had been founded in 1809, when a group of African American members of New York City’s venerable Trinity Church (founded in 1697) broke away because of segregation and other issues. A devout young lay reader, Peter Williams, Jr., became a leader in the new parish and later, its pastor.[3] He was deeply loved by his parishioners and made an indelible mark on the church. One longtime parishioner, writing over a decade after Williams’ death, lamented the loss of ‘the meek and heavenly voice of the Rev. Peter Williams’ and recalled how ‘that venerable father so faithfully proclaimed the gospel of Christ to his flock.’[4] His influence was so deep that McCune Smith’s goddaughter Maritcha Lyons, born well after Williams’ death, wrote of him almost as if she knew his personality and character, if not the details of his life:
The first rector, as is well known was Rev. Peter Williams; of his personal history I know next to nothing as his death preceded my birth fully eight years. …I got the impression however, very early in life that the good rector was exceptional in many ways, his parishioners adored him and he found his way into all hearts by his geniality, unselfishness manifested both directly and otherwise. Long after his demise those who had known him spoke of him with a reverent affection which indicated both his worth and his usefulness.[5]
As we’ve seen in an earlier installment of this newsletter, Williams also became a key figure in McCune Smith’s life, especially in his formative years.
Fast-forwarding back to the present – It just so happens that as I’m writing the book, there’s a question about St Philip’s I want to answer just now.
When I was seeking to locate Lavinia in New York City from the time she arrived there until the time she moved into her son’s household after he returned to New York City from Glasgow in 1837, I found that one year, she was listed in an 1829 New York City directory at 33 Centre St. That was the same address listed for St Philip’s that year as well.[6] (St Philip’s address changed many times throughout the 1820’s and 1830’s, as the street name changed from Collect to Centre in 1828, the length of Centre changed, and so on. An 1833 NYC directory which includes a map shows that St Philip’s 33 Centre St address that year[7] matches its location in Perris’s 1853 atlas, shown above, which matches today’s street numbering of 81-83 Centre.)
After digging and digging, I couldn’t find anything in any history of St Philip’s that showed it had lodgings of any kind attached to it. Nor was I able to find any such thing in directories, newspapers, or other sources, after lots and LOTS more looking. I ran into one dead end after another. For example, in 1824, a man named William Hutson, who ran an intelligence office (gatherer of intelligence or information) shared the 24 Collect Street address with St Philip’s.[8] When I came across this, I thought I was onto something. But after Collect St was renamed Centre in 1828, and in 1829 when Lavinia was listed at 33 Centre, Hutson’s address was given as 30 Centre, indicating that he actually lived in a house nearby and the street numbers were changed to more accurately reflect the separations between buildings on the lots.[9]
So – I’m left having to make the best guess I can given the very limited information I have. Lavinia and McCune Smith (who would have been about 16 at the time) may have been living with family or friends, such as Peter Williams’s family. Lavinia may have found it most convenient to use St Philip’s Church as a contact address, especially if she was serving as a caretaker or in some other highly involved role in the parish.
For now, I also favor the likelihood that both Lavinia and McCune Smith were living with the Williams family at this time. A previous installment of this newsletter explains how an 1830 census record and the testimony of one of McCune Smith’s lifelong friends strongly suggest that McCune Smith lived with the Williamses. The 1830 census record for the Williams family[10] also lists two women between the ages of 24 and 35. One of these was likely Sarah Williams, Peter’s wife. Their daughter Amy was already married and had moved out, and Sarah was significantly younger than her husband, though records vary regarding by how much (censuses provide conflicting ages and age categories for her over the decades). Lavinia would have been aged about 47 at this time. But, census-taking was often a bit sloppy and/or error-ridden, and the census-taker may have found it easier just to fill in 2 under a single age category for the women in the house, or just thought Lavinia looked younger than she was.
The Williams and the Smiths would continue to welcome one another into their households over the following decades. After she was widowed, Sarah Williams moved in with James McCune and Malvina Barnett Smith sometime after they were married, and lived with them at least until the end of McCune Smith’s life.[11]
[1] Quoted in Benjamin Franklin DeCosta, Three Score and Ten: The Story of St. Philip’s Church, New York City (New York: St. Philip’s Parish, 1889), 20.
[2] DeCosta, 25–26, 28–29.
[3] DeCosta, 11–12, 13–15; Shelton H. Bishop, ‘A History of St. Philip’s Church, New York City’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 1946, 302–3; Craig D. Townsend, Faith in Their Own Color: Black Episcopalians in Antebellum New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 26–29.
[4] William J. Wilson, ‘From Our Brooklyn Correspondent’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 13 May 1852.
[5] Maritcha Remond Lyons, ‘Memories of Yesterdays: All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was - An Autobiography’ (New York, 1929), 72–73, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
[6] Thomas Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory (New York: Thomas Longworth, 1829), 520, 637.
[7] Edwin Williams, ed., New-York As It Is, in 1833; and Citizens’ Advertising Directory (New York: J. Disturnell, 1833), 85, 205–6.
[8] Thomas Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory (New York: Thomas Longworth, 1824), 238.
[9] Thomas Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory (New York: Thomas Longworth, 1828), 1828; Longworth, Longworth’s, 1829, 309.
[10] 1830 United States Census, New York, New York County, New York, Digital Image s.v. “Peter Williams” (Ward 14), Ancestry.com.
[11] 1865 New York State Census, Kings County, Brooklyn, Ward 13, digital image s.v. “James M. Smith.” FamilySearch.org.