This Sunday opens our annual
stewardship campaign. In recent years, sermons for this six-week interval in
the fall have focused on the spiritual forbears of our congregation. Two years
ago I thought that I had written a sermon about everyone for whom enough
information was available. I did some more digging and I think we’re good for
another year so I am happy to offer a third series of the Saints of St. Mary’s.
The
name of one man appears on both the documents that incorporated the town of
Kansas in June, 1850 and those that organized our parish in December, 1857.
That is the name of William Gillis. He joined with a handful of other
businessmen to gain official recognition of the town that had grown up on the
Missouri River. At the time of its incorporation, the population was 1,500.
Members of St. Mary’s have not been accustomed to think of him as having an
important part in the history of our church – at least not as important as that
of his niece, Mary Troost. But he was one of the founding members of what was
then known as St. Luke’s Church.
At the time it was organized its
members had been meeting for about three years in borrowed worship space. A
priest from Trinity Church in Independence traveled on foot or by mule the 12
miles between his parish and the Town of
Kansas about twice a month to lead worship. On the weeks he did not visit,
members of the congregation read Morning Prayer. At one point, the Diocese of
Missouri, based in St. Louis, arranged for a bishop to visit and celebrate
baptisms and confirmations, giving the small congregation a sufficient number
of confirmed members to qualify for parish status. Somewhere along the way –
perhaps on that day – William Gillis became a baptized, confirmed communicant
of the Episcopal Church.
The other prominent men who signed the
town’s incorporation papers and the parish’s founding documents knew him as a
wealthy gentleman farmer and Indian trader who claimed to be a lifelong
bachelor. He is described as a large, powerfully built man who dressed in
elegant black clothing summer and winter.
Gillis had made a long and colorful
journey to his position of prominence and respect in Kansas City. He was a native
of Maryland, born between 1795 and
1797. He ran away from home before his
12th birthday and joined the crew of a ship. During his time as a
sailor, he made the acquaintance of William Henry Harrison, who eventually
became the 9th president of the United States. Gillis fought under
Harrison against the Shawnee leader Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe in
1811. Economic opportunity seems to have trumped any ideological fervor Gillis
might have developed as a member of Harrison’s forces. In 1820 he made his way
to southwest Missouri and began to trade with members of the Delaware tribe who
had landed there in the great diaspora of indigenous peoples that followed the
Revolutionary War. Gillis traded provisions, furs and other commodities with the
Delaware for a decade during which he was said to have been made a member of
the tribe. Around 1830, the Delaware living near what is now Springfield,
Missouri were involuntarily relocated again to the junction of the Kaw and Missouri
Rivers. Gillis moved along with them. His trade with them and other indigenous
peoples had made him a wealthy man by that time and when he arrived in this area
he bought thousands of acres of land for pennies each, eventually selling it at
a vast profit. He kept for his own plantation a tract of land bordered by what
are now 23rd and 27th streets and Summit and State Line.
He selected it for its proximity to the Shawnee trail which would facilitate
his continued trade with the Indians. Gillis’
home was described as one of the most beautiful, gracious and elegant
residences in the town, designed and furnished along the lines of a southern
plantation. The farm labor on his land was conducted by slaves.
It is difficult to know what level of
involvement William Gillis had in our parish. During its early years he is
listed as a vestryman, and it is noted that he, along with other wealthy
leaders of the congregation contributed funds to provide an operating budget
and a priest’s compensation. His death predates the construction of this building.
There are no tangible memorials here to Gillis’ participation in the life of
the congregation. I found no information that revealed anything about his inner
life or personality. The one subjective comment I found was the observation of
one of his contemporaries that Gillis was consumed by the acquisition of ever
greater wealth and reluctant to part with what he already possessed. Whether
that was true we will probably never know.
Gillis died in July 1869. Despite his
vast wealth, his will was relatively simple but very curious. The bulk of the
estate went to Gillis’ niece Mary who by that time had become Mrs. Benoist
Troost. But there were two additional bequests of $10 each to two daughters of
a woman described as a member of the Delaware tribe with whom Gillis had
traveled to this area in 1830. One of these additional heiresses was also named
Mary the other was Sophia and the will noted that they were sometimes known as
Mary Gillis and Sophia Gillis. For a man who had represented himself to society
as a lifelong bachelor, this was an interesting revelation.
It became more interesting three and a
half years later with the untimely death of his niece Mary Troost. In 1872,
just before Christmas, she traveled to Pennsylvania to visit a friend. She
arrived to find the town in the grip of a dreadful smallpox epidemic. Mrs.
Troost fell ill almost immediately and died within days of her arrival. Her
will included the bequest of land for the construction a church named St.
Mary’s at what is now the corner of 13th and Holmes. You are in that
church. More than a decade transpired between her death and the transfer of
land to our parish which changed its name in 1879 to St. Mary’s. Materials in
our archives suggest that the long transition had to do with the short time
between the deaths of William Gillis and Mary Troost and the incomplete
revision of her will to incorporate the bequest of her uncle.
What really happened is that after
Mrs. Troost’s death, numerous persons claiming to be legitimate children of
William Gillis from his days as an Indian trader contested both of the wills,
claiming that Mary Troost had exerted undue influence over her uncle. The
lawsuits stated that William Gillis had been legally married at least twice and
associated more casually with a number of other women and that these relationships
had produced as many as a dozen children. The plaintiffs claimed that their
status as legitimate children trumped that of his niece Mrs. Troost. It took
more than a decade to finalize Gillis’ will and 35 years to settle that of Mary
Troost. Most of the claims against the will were found to be without merit, but
not all of them. Sums awarded to Gillis’ legitimate heirs other than his niece
Mary and four decades of litigation dramatically reduced the value of her
estate but the impact of its charitable intent is still alive today in Kansas
City and in this building.
Today we observe the feast of St.
Michael and All Angels. Michael and Gabriel are known traditionally as
guardians of the church. As with many churches, St. Mary’s has windows that
commemorate these two saints positioned on either side of the altar. They are
the easternmost upper windows on either side and I encourage you to look for them when you
come to the altar rail for communion. Our spiritual ancestor, William Gillis,
whose life we explore this morning, is, by our standards, neither saint nor
angel. His contemporaries suggest that
he was a miser. He enslaved other human beings and his interactions with
indigenous persons give us reason to question his motives and morals. What do
we make of this former vestryman, this founding member of our church? His life
began when the United States was one of the world’s newest sovereign nations.
He arrived in our city when its claims to fame were a post office and a
population of 300. He had an opportunity to reinvent himself and seems to have
taken advantage of it. Did he assume a respectability that he did not truly
deserve? If he did, was it to protect the reputation of his niece or to augment
his already substantial fortune or for some other reason? Should we try to disown
him? make excuses for him? write him off as an aberration? give thanks for his
good sense in giving most of his loot to a more respectable and generous relative?
Whatever conclusions we might draw on
the basis of legal documents or his contemporaries’ observations, we know
almost nothing about what this man felt or thought or believed. What we know is
that in addition to founding a town and making a fortune, he joined with his
contemporaries in establishing an Episcopal church in a town that had none. While
it is true that they could have done it without him, it appears likely that we
have him to thank, at least indirectly, for the land on which this building
stands.
William Gillis was a man of his place and
time. The record of his actions indicates that he engaged in racist behavior.
The Episcopal Church in his day was not innocent of racism and its actions as
an institution were destructive of the autonomy of indigenous persons and
disrespectful of their cultural achievements. We know more now. We as
individuals and as a society are not yet free of the sin of racism, but we are
far more aware of what it is and the harm it does than the people of this city
were 150 years ago. The church has offered us opportunities to learn and ways
to seek forgiveness. St. Mary’s has given us a community in which to live out
the promises in our baptismal covenant to strive for justice and peace and
respect the dignity of all persons.
At this time of year in particular we
examine our vision for the future of St. Mary’s and the means by which it will
be realized. A look at our past helps to put that in perspective. Nearly 156
years after William Gillis signed the documents that organized this church, we
are still here. We do not share many of his values or approve of much of his
behavior, but he has a part in our being here this morning. More importantly, as our Old Testament lessons
says, God has surely been present with us through those 156 years, in good
times and bad; the Lord who will keep us in all times and who will do for us
what he has promised.
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