The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

In not a few of the early churches there was an utter lack of uniformity in the style of the seats or pews employed and permission was often granted to influential persons to buy space within the churches and erect pews of their own, suited to their personal fancy. The space not occupied by these privately owned pews was sometimes filled with movable benches, stools, or chairs, and it was not an unusual thing for the humbler members of the congregation to bring their seats with them and put them wherever they could find room. We find ample evidence of this condition of things in places as widely apart as the simple country parish of St. David’s, Radnor, in the Welsh Barony, and King’s Chapel in Boston. In early days the members of St. David’s congregation fetched thither nondescript seats as they listed and it was not until well into the eighteenth century that rough benches were furnished and “rented for the support of the Church.” Not till the middle of the eighteenth century do the parish records show the existence of pews and the custom seems to have then prevailed of “selling a piece of ground within the Church on which the purchaser had the privilege of building such a pew as he desired.” With this system, or rather lack of system, in seating, it appears that squabbles occasionally arose as we may judge from the following minute in the old register:—

“October ye 26th, 1747. Whereas a Difference hath arisen between Francis Wayne and his Brother Isaac Wayne [the father of General Anthony Wayne] about their Right in the pugh Late Anthony Wayne and John Hunter, and it appearing to the Vestry that ye sd. Francis and Isaac have purchased the Ground of a Pugh and the sd. Isaac having Built upon a part of the Ground the Vestry Do agree that the sd. Francis have the ground for half a pugh joining of the west side to Richard Hughes and Wm. Owen’s Pugh.”

So late as 1763 the “Vestry granted to Robert Jones the privilege to build a Pew on a piece of ground in St. David’s Church, adjoining Wayne’s and Hunter’s pew, he paying for the ground £4 10s.” In King’s chapel in Boston the vestry “stipulated that each member should pay the cost of building his own pew; this was accordingly done, but without any uniformity, so that the interior of the old church must have presented an amusing diversity of work.... The walls were decorated with banners, escutcheons, and coats of arms of the King of England, of the nobility and gentry of the congregation, and of the Governour of the province, and the interior was considered so magnificent and so luxurious as to be a blot upon the religion of Massachusetts.”

As might be expected, when so much was made of assigning each member of the congregation a seat befitting his dignity, the question of suitable clothing loomed large in the minds of our forebears and from one end of the Colonies to the other they gave way to the temptation to appear before their neighbours in their best frills and furbelows so that the church service on Sunday was often a clothes show as well. To such an extent was this passion for display carried that it led to a custom in some country parishes of New England to which Alice Morse Earle refers. She says:—

“One very pleasing diversion of the attention of the congregation from the parson was caused by an innocent custom that prevailed in many a country community. Just fancy the flurry on a June sabbath in Killingly, in 1785, when Joseph Gay, clad in velvet coat, lace frilled shirt, and white broadcloth knee breeches, with his fair bride of a few days, gorgeous in a peach coloured silk gown and a bonnet trimmed ‘with sixteen yards of white ribbon,’ rose in the middle of the sermon, in their front seat in the gallery and stood for several minutes, slowly turning around in order to show from every point of view their bridal finery to the eagerly gazing congregation of friends and neighbours. Such was the really delightful and thoughtful custom, in those fashion-plateless days, among persons of wealth in that and other churches; it was, in fact, part of the wedding celebration. Even in midwinter, in the icy church, the blushing bride would throw aside her broadcloth cape or camblet roquelo and stand up clad in a sprigged India muslin gown with only a thin lace tucker over her neck, warm with pride in her pretty gown, her white bonnet with ostrich feathers and embroidered veil, and in her new husband.”

If the same custom did not prevail in other parts of the country, doubtless the members of the congregation had ample opportunity, and made the best of it too, to scrutinise the apparel of their fellow worshippers. It is to be feared, however, that their brave attire sometimes suffered damage from insufficiently dusted seats for we read that the sexton of Christ Church, Philadelphia, probably the wealthiest and most splendid church in the Colonies, having applied in 1761 for an increase of salary, it was agreed to give him “£20 a year on a condition that he was ‘to wash the church twice a year and sand it at Easter and September; and also to sweep the church once every two weeks.’”

The music was of an exceedingly indifferent character from an artistic point of view and was not always edifying and whole hearted on the part of the congregation. In New England, musical instruments were only introduced after a storm of bitter opposition and general repugnance to the “boxes of whistles,” as organs were contemptuously called. Even in the Middle and Southern Colonies, where a prejudice against instruments did not exist, the music must often have been of a distressing nature. Referring once more to Christ Church we read that “the singer then called the Clerk, was Joseph Fry—a small man with a great voice, who, standing in the organ gallery, was wont to make the whole church resound with his strong, deep and grave tones.” When there was a ripple of improvement in the general musical situation, after the Revolution, “the efforts of church musicians to raise the standard were apparently not looked upon with favour. Joseph Fry, or his successors, did not ‘make a cheerful noise before the Lord’ to the taste of the congregation, for in 1785 the vestry passed a resolution ‘that the clerks be desired to sing such tunes only as are plain and familiar to the congregation; the singing of other tunes, and frequent changing of tunes, being to the certain knowledge of this vestry, generally disagreeable and inconvenient.’”

Although early New England settlers were at first summoned to meeting “by drum, horn and shell,” bells were soon introduced and in the Middle and Southern Colonies great store was set by them and more than one fine peal was brought hither from England. The bells of Christ Church, Philadelphia, were particularly famous and were always being pealed so that the German traveller, Dr. Schoepf, said that you would think you were in a papal or imperial city—there was always something to be rung. “From the time that ‘the ring of bells’—the first in the Colonies—was first hung, their metal throats were busy proclaiming all sorts of things from the anniversaries of King Charles’s Restoration, Guy Fawkes’s Day, and the King’s Birthday, down to semi-weekly markets or the arrival in the Delaware of the ‘Myrtilla,’ Captain Budden’s ship, in which the peal had been brought out from London.”

In a previous chapter reference has been made to the splendid equipage in which wealthy people of the Northern and Middle Colonies came to church. A word must be added, to complete the picture, of the way in which Southern congregations arrived. While a few of the very wealthy drove to church in their state coaches, the great majority came on horseback for the distances were too great to traverse afoot. Horses were tethered in groups to the trees about the churches and it was the recognised custom that the congregation should gather in the church yard before and after service and they gladly embraced the opportunity thus afforded for social intercourse. In country districts of the South the same condition prevails to-day, and saddle horses and buggies may be found in groups under all the trees near the church building or in the sheds, where such are provided.

And now we pass to a consideration of the architectural features of the church buildings in the several Colonies. We shall begin with those in Virginia as they were the earliest. Only two of the seventeenth century structures in the Old Dominion remain but they are sufficiently distinctive to give us a very definite idea of the architectural ideals that actuated the Virginia colonists. These are St. Luke’s at Smithfield, built in 1632, and St. Peter’s, New Kent County, built at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, but so closely following the type of the first mentioned building that it may be reckoned as a seventeenth century structure. Besides these two, there is the tower of the old church at Jamestown to which has been added, in the way of restoration, a body designed upon the lines of St. Luke’s, Smithfield.