Another breach was made in the conservatism of the old church when one of the young trustees proposed to let the New York Kindergarten Association use the room rent free for a kindergarten, then new in the neighborhood. The older, wiser heads were gravely shaken at this remarkable innovation, but it came on March 31, 1892, and with it the beloved Anna E. Crawford as teacher. The fairy godmother who maintained it was Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, giving the kindergarten the name of her son, Robert Gould Shaw. It was a happy combination this, and the little boys became strong men in the memory of the young Colonel who gave his life at Fort Wagner at the head of the First Colored Regiment. They buried him disdainfully "with his niggers," but Robert Gould Shaw lived again in the lives of little boys trained to sacrifice at Sea and Land. Nor will the Colonel's sister be forgotten: Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, who gave her young husband in the same cause and thereafter lived a life that merited William Rhinelander Stewart calling her "one of the most useful and remarkable women of the Nineteenth Century." Her spirit of service was renewed in the little girls of the Shaw Kindergarten. The beautiful bas relief by St. Gaudens on Boston Common is less of a memorial than the kindergarten in Henry Street.
Mrs. Shaw died December 29, 1902, having supported the kindergarten for eleven years.
Shaw Memorial Kindergarten
Another departure was an open air meeting establisht by Mr. Sproull, gathering at the church door Sunday afternoons. First things are hard things.
But a storm was brewing. Uptown churches needed money, their pastors were influential in the denomination and it seemed to many good business to dispose of the Market Street church.
So, on March 13, 1893, Presbytery ordered the church sold, declaring, to comply with the Corning deed, that "missionary work in the church or in that locality was no longer expedient." The church pointed out that 29 of the 57 churches in New York Presbytery had received less members during the preceding year, 16 churches had fewer members, 14 churches raised less money, and that 6 churches made a worse showing than Sea and Land in every single item reported on. There were then only 4 Protestant churches for 60,000 people. The battle was on, and the bitterness of the Briggs trial had not yet subsided,—the same Briggs who as a young man belonged to Market Street church.
Mr. Sproull's small salary allowance was discontinued and he was forced to resign, July 1, 1893. Then came hard times, no friends, no minister, no funds. But when the tale of bricks was doubled Moses came.