History of St. Peter's

1500-1700 | 1624 | 1628 | 1692 | 1728 | 1730-1740 | 1738 | 1740 | 1760 | 1773 | 1774 | 1777 | 1784 | 1790 | 1811-1834 | 1833-1834 | 1845-1846 | 1850-1870 | 1872 | 1885 | 1893 | 1894 | 1900's

St. Peter's was founded in 1733, soon after permission was granted for religious groups other than Congregationalists to worship in the colony. The land on which the church is built was donated by Phillip English, a wealthy merchant who had been jailed in the past both for not paying taxes to support the Congregational church and also as an accused witch. The church was attended by the working sailors of Salem's busy port, by settled residents and by representatives of the Crown. During the Revolutionary War years St. Peter's was a focus of anti-British sentiment. Several diaries and novels of the period mention rallies at which vegetables were thrown at the building. On the other hand, its rector was so respected that he was one of the few Anglican clergymen who stayed safely in his home throughout the War. St. Peter's most famous rector was Alexander Viets Griswold (1766-1843) who was Bishop of the Eastern Diocese (all of New England except for Connecticut.)

During his tenure the original wooden church was taken down so a handsome stone one could be built in 1833. The congregation still worships in this building. In 1871 a chapel was added to St. Peter's building, built directly over the old graveyard. Some of the tombstones were placed in the Chapel walls; others may be found in front of the church. The church thrived and through the years began mission churches, now successful parishes, including Calvary Church, Danvers, Grace Church, Salem, St. Peter's Church, Beverly, and St. Paul's Church, Peabody. St. Peter's gradually left behind its colonial past. The system of renting and selling pews-for example-was ended in 1893. Since that time the congregation has been governed by the Rector, an elected Vestry, and an annual meeting of all members. After World War I, St. Peter's was deeply influenced by the English Oxford Movement, which renewed the meaning of ceremony in worship and pointed the Church toward social action. In the 1960's, St. Peter's leaders were active in the Civil Rights movement. More recently still, St. Peter's has become a more intentionally inclusive congregation. We believe that whatever race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, or orientation; we are all one in Christ. This simple declarative statement has caused worldwide controversy. No wonder, when it was first uttered two thousand years ago, it did the same. "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

Link to Graveyard markers: There is a fascinating link that document many of the grave markers at St. Peter’s. Click here

1500 to 1700

England experienced great instability and chaos. It was an unsafe time. The people of the era were plagued by civil wars and revolutions, wars with Spain and France, economic collapses, and several extended dissolutions of Parliament. The Church of England struggled to establish correct doctrine and church/state relationships. In the mid-1500’s, the authority of the Bishop of Rome was rejected by Henry VIII, reinstated by his daughter, Mary, and rejected again by her half-sister, Elizabeth. In the 1600’s, the Puritans waged two civil wars. The first, the Great Rebellion, succeeded in abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, and began England’s brief experiment with democracy, the Commonwealth. The second, the Glorious Revolution, ended James II’s threat to re-establish Roman Catholicism and brought William of Orange, a Puritan, from the Continent to the throne. Hundreds who were not politically or religiously sympathetic with whatever faction was in power were executed as traitors or heretics. Hundreds more, the sick, handicapped, or just unfortunate, were executed as witches. England’s economy slowly moved from feudal farming towards becoming that of an urban capitalistic empire. Inherited parcels of farm land dwindled with each generation forcing many to seek other livelihoods. Many migrated to the new colonies for religious and economic reasons or into the cities to work the factories. Between 1600 and 1642, 80,000 Englishmen, mostly Puritan Separatists, convinced that they could not change the Church of England from within, left their homeland. Some went to the European Continent, the East Indies, and Canada. The overwhelming majority, three-quarters of them, came to America, primarily to Virginia and New England.

1624

Roger Conant and the Rev. George Lyford, a Puritan Anglican priest, arrived in Plymouth Colony in New England. Lyford secretly intended to bring the Plymouth Separatists back into the Church of England. When his intentions became apparent (he baptized an infant using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer making the sign of the cross), he was forced to leave. After wintering in Nantasket, Lyford joined Roger Conant’s settlement on Cape Anne, still a part of the Plymouth Colony. The next year, 1626, this settlement of fifteen families relocated to Naumkeag, the native name for the Salem area. The Rev. Mr. Lyford conducted services and administered the Sacraments in Naumkeag using the Book of Common Prayer for a full year before his removal to Virginia. Thus, both the European community in Naumkeag, soon to be called Salem, and the Anglican community in southern Essex County began, being one and the same. St. Peter’s Parish is that community’s most direct ecclesiastical descendant, and, by inheritance, Salem’s first “first church”.

1628

The Massachusetts Bay Company received a Colonial Grant to a large tract of land, from three miles north of the Merrimack River to three miles south of the Charles River and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. John Endicott, a company official and Massachusetts’ first Governor, and 50 Puritan Separatists arrived in Salem, the new Colony’s first capital. A year later, another 200 colonists arrived. The leaders of the outnumbered Salem Anglicans, John and Samuel Brown, were accused and convicted of being “schismatiques” and shipped back to England. Loyalty to the Church of England and use of the Anglican Prayer Book was forbidden. The next year, 1630, Governor John Winthrop and 900 additional settlers arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony with its Royal Charter. By the end of the Great Puritan Migration in 1642, Massachusetts’ population (excluding the Plymouth Colony) had reached 20,000. Most were Puritan Separatists, but, there were also Quakers, Baptists, those with minimal or no church affiliation and, yes, those loyal to the Church of England, Puritans, moderates, and Catholics. Voting privileges and General Court membership was restricted to adult, male, landholding Puritan Separatists (Congregationalists) only. For many generations, Salem Anglicans would not enjoy public worship, a priest, a church building, or a local name. Even so, they continued as a viable church group, a thorn in Puritan Salem’s side. They refused to worship with the Separatists, and, at times, were jailed for refusing to pay local taxes, a portion of which supported the Separatist Church.

1692

The most famous of these early Salem Anglicans was Phillip English. He was a wealthy sea-going merchant and a town selectman, who was jailed several times for refusing to pay his town taxes. Undoubtedly, casual talk amongst the Puritans did not shed a good light on him. When afflicted girls in Salem Village (now Danvers) were compelled to name their tormentors during the famous Salem Witchcraft Hysteria, they, quite naturally, accused the “bad” people that their parents and fellow churchmen resented. Two of these were Phillip English and his wife, Mary. Both were convicted of witchcraft. Both cheated the hangman by escaping from jail and fleeing to New York. Phillip English returned to Salem and lived another 35 years (his wife was not so fortunate, she died in exile). He was buried in St. Peter’s church yard, one of only three (?) known witch gravesites in America.

1728

The General Court ordered town treasurers to forward the religious taxes collected from active Quakers, Baptists, and Anglicans, to their respective teacher/minister. The stage was set for these groups to invest more fully in church buildings and meetinghouses, and to support, financially, their clergymen.

1730’s & 40’s

Now, the Salem Anglicans were able to organize a formal church, St. Peter’s Parish. Phillip English generously contributed a portion of his land and money for the construction of a church building. Other Salemites and churchmen from Boston, Jamaica, Newport, and Barbados, also contributed. On St. Peter’s Feast Day, June 29, 1733, a frame for the new building was erected. This building was of plain wooden rectangular construction with a front tower on the west side. It had forty pewboxes on the floor, and a balcony with fifteen pews for negro slaves. A high colonial pulpit was located in the central aisle above the reading desk. In 1738, John Gibbs of Boston made the altar-piece, a triptich containing the Ten Commandments, Creed, and Lord’s Prayer, as required by Canon Law. It was placed above the altar on the east wall.

On October 8, 1738,

the Rev. Charles Brockwell, a missionary priest sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, was installed as St. Peter’s Parish’s first Rector.

1740

In 1740, a bell, cast in Gloucester, England, was hung in the tower and was rung for Sunday Worship, on Feast Days, and daily at 5AM and 9PM. Salemites retired for the night and rose in the morning with St. Peter’s bell. It is still used as a call to worship, to celebrate weddings, and to toll the passing of church members. Three years later, in 1743, St. Peter’s Parish imported the Colony’s second and Salem’s first organ. It can well be imagined that anything as “superstitious and Popish” as an organ was not well received in Puritan Salem. In 1744, Sir Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons in London, was elected St. Peter’s Parish’s first Warden.

March 24, 1760

Jonathan Pue was buried in the church yard. It was in a forgotten “small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment” that Hawthorne found the scarlet letter and Pue’s account of Hester Prynne. Hawthorne mentioned reading “an account of recent times (1834, 1846?), the digging up of his remains in the little grave yard of St. Peter’s Church, during the recent renewal of that edifice.”

March 28, 1773

Nathaniel Bowditch was baptized in St. Peter’s Parish. Bowditch was a self taught linguist and mathematician, a sea captain, banker, and insurer. He improved navigational methods, corrected 8000 mistakes in the English navigation, translated Mécanique Céleste, and wrote The Practical Navigator. Bowditch also significantly improved banking and insurance bookkeeping methods.

1774

The Port of Boston was closed to shipping by Parliament. It was a politically and emotionally difficult time and unsafe for the British on the streets of Boston. Both the Royal Governor, General Thomas Gage, and the General Court moved to Salem. The Governor attended the local Parish of the Church of England, St. Peter’s. Samuel McIntire, the renowned architect and carver, was contracted to embellish the State Pew. At this time, General Stephen Abbott, one of General Washington’s assistants, was a member of St. Peter’s Parish. In October, the General Court, under the leadership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams, defied the Governor and organized the first Provincial Congress just a few hundred yards from St. Peter’s. This was America’s first formal legislative act of open antagonism toward the British Empire. Armed hostilities in New England ended in March of 1776 when the British Army was driven out of Boston. Massachusetts was, essentially, free from English rule. Four months later, the Declaration of Independence was signed. However, hostilities among the citizenry continued. A church member had to be elected “for ye gallery”, the balcony, to discourage Patriot spitting on worshipping Parish Loyalists below.

1777

In 1777, by order of the General Court, Parishes of the Church of England were closed, including St. Peter’s. Most Parishes had already closed, their Loyalist members having left Massachusetts, most going to Nova Scotia. St. Peter’s Parish’s vacant building, Salem’s “Tory Church”, was heavily vandalized. In 1780, services resumed at St. Peter’s Parish. The residents of Salem contributed liberally to the repair of the church building.

June 4, 1789

The Rev. Edward Bass was elected the first Bishop of Massachusetts at a meeting of the Clergy held at St. Peter’s Parish.

October 5 & 6, 1790

Clergy and Lay Delegates from Massachusetts’ thirteen Episcopal Parishes met at St. Peter’s and adopted the first Constitution of the Diocese of Massachusetts.

1811 to 1834

The Rt. Rev. Alexander Griswold was Bishop of the Eastern Diocese (all of New England except Connecticut) and, from 1829 to 1834, the Rector of St. Peter’s Church. At this time, a Bishop had the dual responsibilities of caring for his Diocese and a Parish from which he received financial support. St. Peter’s was the Diocese’s leading Parish, its Cathedral.

1833 & 34

Due to the age of its building and St. Peter’s Parish’s increased status, the old building was replaced with the present stone structure. It was modeled after St. Anne’s in Lowell which was, itself, modeled after the church in Derby, England. The colonial pewboxes, altar-piece, and bell were relocated into the new building.

1845 & 46

A Victorian Chancel, designed by Richard Upjohn of New York, was added to the church building. Upjohn was a leading architect of the Gothic Revival Movement. The Chancel’s triplet window is one of the oldest stained glass windows on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

1850 to 1870

St. Peter’s Parish gave birth to Calvary Church in Danvers, Grace Church in Salem, St. Peter’s Church in Beverly, and St. Paul’s Church in Peabody. Salem’s zenith as a center of world trade had passed. She was, now, a small industrial city.

1872

A Victorian Chapel was built over the church’s cemetery. The headstones were placed in the Chapel walls and church’s front yard alongside the stones of those buried there.

1885

A ten bell chime was placed in the tower.

1893

The Proprietary System of church membership was abolished and the Free Church System was instituted. Free church membership is extended to anyone who regularly attends and contributes according to their abilities. Proprietary church membership was obtained by owning a pewbox and paying its weekly assessment. The assessed value of a pewbox was determined by a committee according to its perceived desirability. A pewbox’s proximity to the pulpit, stoves, or light giving windows, or a larger than average size, would increase its value. Visual obstructions, a drafty window, or a small size, would diminish the value of other pewboxes.

1894

The Swedish Christian Society conducted worship services in the Chapel.

1900’s

The rapid growth that the Diocese of Massachusetts and St. Peter’s experienced in the 1800’s subsided. Diocesan Offices were permanently located in Boston. Salem’s status had declined. St. Peter’s assumed an equal role with her sister Parishes within the Diocese. St. Peter’s Parish continued to follow in the “low church” tradition established by Bishop Griswold. In the late 1800’s there was opposition to the robing of the male choir, altar candlesticks (a gift), and reading the Litany from in front of the Chancel instead of at the reading desk. All these things, now standard among Episcopal Churches, were innovations in their day and suspiciously regarded. In the 1920’s, St. Peter’s Parish slowly embraced the principles of the Catholic Revival inaugurated by the Oxford Movement. A synthesis of the evangelical “low church” and the anglo-catholic “high church” movements began in the 1960’s in the liturgical revisions adopted by the Episcopal Church, culminating in the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer. St. Peter’s Parish continues as an active church. You are invited to worship with us. The Holy Eucharist is served every Sunday at 8 and 10 AM.