Today we continue with
part III of the Saints of St. Mary’s, a series of sermons about the people who
have, through the years, made our parish what it is. Our subjects are two of the rectors who
served the congregation when it still had its original name, St. Luke’s.
The
Rev’d. George Charles Betts was born in Dublin in 1840. He was ordained in
Omaha in 1865. Around that time he became rector of St. John’s Church in Cass
County, Nebraska, a couple of counties south of Omaha. He had come there from a
Methodist Church in Denver, where he had been the minister in charge. It’s
difficult to say what he was doing at a Methodist church in Denver, but in the
mid 19th century it was difficult to find clergy willing to serve on
the frontier. The Methodists may have been content to borrow him.
After a year or two at St.
John’s he became Rector of Trinity Church in Omaha which would eventually
become the Cathedral of the Diocese of Nebraska. The Cathedral sponsored a new
mission church in the east end of the city which was organized on June 11, St.
Barnabas Day in 1868. Fr. Betts helped
arrange for a loan for construction of a building and the first services were
held there about six months later. It was organized as a parish with the name
of St. Barnabas about six months after that inaugural service. Members of the
Vestry offered its rectorship to Fr. Betts and he accepted their call on June
11, 1869. He appears to have served there well and happily for nearly three
years. But on a Sunday in March 1872, he celebrated mass at St. Barnabas in the
morning and received the bishop for a visit that evening. It was not a happy
occasion. Fr. Betts’ high church tendencies were not pleasing to the bishop.
Conflict over that issue was not uncommon at that time and there were strong
opinions on both sides. The bishop “demanded that the rector relinquish the use
of the chasuble or any other vestment save the surplice and black stole, that
he direct the choir that they do not turn towards the altar when reciting the
creed or the glorias and that the rector not make the sign of the cross in
benedictions or elsewhere except in the baptismal office.” For a high churchman
those instructions would have been impossible to tolerate. Fr. Betts declined
to comply. He did promise that if the bishop could find any rule written in the
church canons or elsewhere that prohibited the use of those objects, vestments
and practices that the bishop wanted him to do away with, he would apologize
and comply immediately.
The bishop tried again.
He stated that it was his “wish” that they be done away with and because he
wanted done, Fr. Betts ought to do it. Fr. Betts declined again. Shortly after
that meeting with the bishop, he resigned his position as rector and left
Omaha.
There was a church about
200 miles south that was happy to have him. St. Luke’s in Kansas City was 15
years old by then and had been served by several rectors, none of whom had
stayed for much longer than a year. A
young, energetic priest with a skill for building membership and raising money
was just what the vestry of St. Luke’s was looking for. One wonders if Fr.
Betts was not pleased by the fact that in Kansas City he would more than two
hundred miles away from the bishop of the diocese of Missouri. Fr. Betts went
to work on refining the worship of St. Luke’s. One of the first things he did
was have “a proper altar” built in the church building at 8th and
Walnut. He put the choir in vestments and put a cross and candles on the altar.
Members of the congregation liked it. They donated a processional cross and
Eucharistic vestments. The parish organized a guild of young men, a women’s
society and something called a “Pleasant Hour Club” for the matrons. There were
so many people coming to church they had to enlarge the building. Fr. Betts
began taking his show on the road, traveling with the choir to conduct worship
in areas outside Kansas City. He was a 33rd degree mason and the
choir occasionally provided music for various masonic events in the area. The
men’s guild of St. Luke’s traveled with him to the jail in Wyandotte County
where he presided at worship on Sunday afternoons. The choir sang at Vesper
services – like our Evensong – at some of the Roman Catholic churches in the
area. The history of our parish, notes that “The Rector of St. Luke’s was an
institution of the city.” Two years after he became Rector, Fr. Betts was
celebrating mass daily. A fair number of Episcopal Churches do that now, but in
the late 19th century, morning prayer was the norm on Sundays, with
the Eucharist celebrated once a month. To offer it daily was to identify a
parish as truly Anglo-catholic. By all accounts, Fr. Betts was a huge success
at St. Mary’s. Not only did he serve the parish well, he acted as a mentor to
several young colleagues, offering them the opportunity to serve at St. Luke’s
under his supervision before they took charge of parishes. In the spring of
1876 he received a call from Trinity Church in St. Louis and moved there. After
a few years at Trinity, he took a parish in Louisville and then moved to New
Jersey and on to New York.
As with nearly all of
our spiritual ancestors at St. Mary’s most of the information we have about Fr.
Betts is descriptive rather than introspective. He seems to have been an
energetic and purposeful man with strong opinions. I mentioned that he was
Irish by birth and throughout his life he supported the cause of Irish
nationalism. While serving as Rector of Trinity, St. Louis, he became the
president of the Irish National Convention. An account in the New York Times of
an event honoring the memory of Robert Emmet, one of the great martyrs of the
Irish Nationalist cause, lists Fr. Betts among the VIPs in attendance and
describes an impassioned speech he gave that evening. He is the first rector for whom we have a
large portrait. It’s on the far right end on the north wall of the parish hall.
We also have one candid photo of him standing on the porch of the church at 8th
and Walnut. You can see that picture just inside the door at the back of the
church.
All indications are that
Fr. Betts remained a bachelor during his time as rector of St. Luke’s, but at
some point he married and had two daughters, Annie and Mary, and a son who was named
Herbert Keble Betts, I would suppose after George Herbert and John Keble, two
well-known historical figures in the Church of England. Herbert made his living
as an actor and was also commissioned as a lay preacher in the Episcopal
Church.
Parishioner Thomas Pain
knew Fr. Betts personally. Pain was an Englishman by birth and Fr. Betts’ Irish
Nationalist sentiments might have made things tense between them, but it
appears not to have. Pain writes of him “He was a Fenian, but said all his best
friends were Englishmen and it was his love for England that made him work to
free her from Ireland.” Fr. Betts died at the age of 61 in Goshen New York. He
died late on a Saturday evening of heart failure. On his desk were found his
sermon for the following morning and an address prepared for the annual meeting
of his parish which was scheduled for that Sunday evening.
There is no doubt that
Fr. Betts built St. Luke’s into a strong, vibrant and growing parish. They must
have been sorry to see him go. There is little known of his successor, the
Rev’d. Minerson Erastus Buck, compared with what we know of Fr. Betts, but it
is interesting information. There is an entry about Fr. Buck in a multi-volume
book called The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of
Eminent and Self-made Men. I believe he falls into the latter category. He was
born to Minerson Erastus Buck, Sr. and his wife Maria Pierce Buck in Ravenna,
Ohio in 1849. The family moved to Kalamazoo County, Michigan two years later. Erastus
attended school and worked on his family’s farm during the summers until he was
15 years old. The family’s circumstances
offered him little chance of going to college. Instead, he left home to make
his fortune. His family were Methodists, like many on the western frontier, but
after leaving home the future Fr. Buck found an Episcopal Church where he fell
in love with the liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer. He was determined to
study for the priesthood and persuaded someone at Nashotah House Seminary in
Milwaukee to admit him on the basis of his high school record. He earned his
tuition by working as a farm laborer during the summer. By all accounts, he did
well enough at Nashotah and was ordained deacon in the early 1870s. He served
as deacon in charge of Trinity Church in Three Rivers Michigan. The parish was
near collapse when he took charge of it. The parish had a half-finished
building and debt of more than $2,000, but Deacon Buck rallied them.
Parishioners were inspired to contribute enough money to retire the debt,
complete construction of the church building and build a new spire on top of it.
Deacon Buck’s name appears among those
of the clergy who met to organize the new diocese of Western Michigan in
1874. They elected a bishop who ordained
him to the priesthood the following spring.
He continued his work, now as Rector of Trinity Three Rivers until
September, 1876 when he was elected Rector of St. Luke’s Church in Kansas City.
He began his work there on the feast of St. Luke, October 18, of that year. The
Biographical Dictionary of self-made men notes: “This call was entirely
unsolicited, he was known to the people of the parish only by reputation as an
able preacher and successful church financier.” When he arrived, St. Luke’s
Kansas City is described as being in debt for $3,000 – perhaps for those
expansions of the building made under Fr. Betts’. Fr. Buck had been in Kansas
City only a year by the time the congregation raised enough money to pay it off.
His biography suggests that he took part in the initial discussion of the
creation of the Diocese of West Missouri, beginning about 10 years before the
division actually took place. Fr. Buck became the Chaplain of a Group Called
the Craig Rifles. It had organized originally during the Civil War under the
name the Kansas City Guards. After the fighting ended, it was re-invented as a
social and charitable organization emphasizing exhibition drills, flashy
uniforms and an annual gala that was one of the town’s hottest tickets. One
wonders what attracted this humble farmer’s son with no experience of fighting
to a military organization. Perhaps the experience of being a boy too young to
enlist during the civil war inspired his interest in the military. Fr. Buck died of tuberculosis in Kansas City
on January 20, 1879, having begun the process of changing the parish’s name
from St. Luke’s to St. Mary’s. His body was returned to Kalamazoo for burial.
In this day, when the
ordination process requires several years of qualification and scrutiny of
one’s motives and accomplishments one wonders if the devotion and diligence of
a man like Erastus Buck would have been enough to allow him to be ordained. At
a time when the search for a new Rector can consume more than a year and
involves extensive background checking and consultation with references, one
wonders if a man like Fr. Betts who had run afoul of his bishop would have been
called so easily to a new parish, or if a man like Fr. Buck would have been
elected sight unseen. It is to our benefit that they were.
The history of St. Mary’s is filled with ups and
downs, stories of financial and organizational stress and times of health and
bounty. Through all of those years run the stories of gifted, unique and
sometimes quirky leaders. Today as always, we give thanks for their ministry to
this parish.
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