AMHERST — Whether volunteering at the Not Bread Alone soup kitchen in Amherst or the Amherst Survival Center, making meals for the cot shelter in Northampton, or supporting schools in Haiti and local refugees from Laos, members of the Grace Episcopal Church have made their presence felt in the community.
“Grace Church has been involved in either establishing or helping to establish or continuing to support most of the local mission work,” says Kenneth Samonds, an unofficial historian for the church.
To mark its place in the region for the past century and a half, members of the church are beginning a celebration that will run over the next several months.
“We will be spreading the joy of a church that is 150 years old,” said Mary Hocken, chairwoman of the 150th Anniversary Committee.
The church occupies a prominent block at the intersection of Boltwood Avenue and Spring Street near Town Hall, with its cornerstone, quarried in Leverett, placed there in 1865. The building began holding services a year later.
Stephen McKelvey, an anniversary committee member, said the sesquicentennial events begin Saturday at 3 p.m. with a walking tour of historic sites associated with the church.
“Between now and June, we will be showcasing all the activity we’ve been involved in for the very long term,” said McKelvey, observing that 200 families currently make up the church.
McKelvey said the church wants the larger public to learn more about Grace, which is already recognized for its music, including its choir and organ, as well as having prominent members, including gospel scholar Horace Clarence Boyer and famed trumpeter Walter Chesnut.
And it has made contributions to the life of the community in lesser-known ways, such as its leading role in the Dec. 25, 1866, celebrations of Christmas in Amherst.
Samonds said a newspaper article references this unusual event, with children receiving presents even as stores in Amherst were open that day. Christmas would not become a federal holiday for another four years.
“That struck me, that people didn’t observe Christmas,” Samonds said.
Much of the information about the origins of the church has been researched recently by Samonds, who has been providing monthly updates of his work to the congregation.
“I’ve read 150 years of vestry minutes of Grace Church,” Samonds said.
He will lead the walking tour, in which he will give insights at various stops, with participants holding four new processional banners made by church members. Hocken said these banners will be used to celebrate Pentecost next spring.
“One of my ideas was that the church should go to West Cemetery where there are at least 22 families related to the original inception of the Episcopal Association of Amherst,” Samonds said.
Samonds will present a chronology and biographies at the graves, which will be marked by flowers, including talking about the lone female founder of the church, Mary Jones, and vestryman Ithamar Francis Conkey, who was on the church building committee.
From the cemetery, the tour will head south on North Pleasant to the Simeon Strong House on Amity Street, which owner John Emerson had offered as the site for the Grace Church chapel. Samonds explained that Alma Emerson, John Emerson’s sister, is one of three major figures in creating the church, along with Mary Jones and Frederic Dan Huntington.
Samonds said Alma Emerson approached Jones, whom he calls “the cultural and social hub of Amherst in the 1860s,” as well as the mother of Jones Library benefactor Samuel Minot Jones, and asked why there was no Episcopal church in Amherst.
Jones was introduced to the Episcopal church in Troy, New York, after being married in the First Congregational Church to Thomas Jones, and thought Emerson’s idea was a good one.
The next stop on the tour will be the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Amity Street, which was Jones’ home, followed by a visit to the parking lot across from Jones Library, the site of Amherst Academy, famed for educating Emily Dickinson, but also where members of the newly formed church met before they built the Boltwood Avenue building.
The final stop will be at the former Baptist Church on South Pleasant Street, now used as Amherst College offices, where the first Sunday services were held for five weeks before Huntington gave a sermon about bishops. That sermon forced the Episcopalians to hastily move to the First Congregational Church, then on the corner of South Pleasant Street and Northampton Road — a site that Amherst College now uses as College Hall.
Ironically, Samonds said, the Baptists’ decision to remove the Episcopalians was beneficial.
“By getting kicked out of the Baptist church, they got a lot more people to come to the service,” Samonds said.
In 1864, 40 families signed inception papers, and that September an organization meeting was held. Samuel P. Parker was called on as the rector and a search began for a site for the church.
The 150th-anniversary events will continue with a tour of the stained-glass windows Dec. 4, after the 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. services, and a historical tour of the building Jan. 22, describing where the stone came from and the history of the bell tower.
Former clergy will come back and preach next spring and events will conclude with a “birthday celebration” picnic June 4, 2017.
During all events, the church will have displays of historic documents, original architectural drawings and floor plans.
“These are all things none of us knew existed, but we’ve pulled them out of storage,” Samonds said.
Hocken said the idea of the yearlong celebration came from the Rev. Tom Synan, the current rector.
“We’re excited about all the activities that are being planned to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Grace Church, and the opportunities that we will have to share our history with the entire community,” Synan said in a statement.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
