I’m out in Chicago leading a workshop. While I’m there, I’d thought I’d treat you to some interesting Unitarian history.
The following comes from an unsigned manuscript in the First Unitarian church archives. This manuscript, titled “How our church began,” gives the history of North Unitarian Church, which merged into First Unitarian in 1971. It should be obvious that when the author refers to a “Bohemian man,” she means someone who literally came from Bohemia, a part of Europe now part of Germany and the Czech Republic. Thus, the “Bohemian man” is a recent immigrant to the United States.
In the year 1889 Mr. Paul Revere Frothingham came to New Bedford as assistant minister to Mr. Potter who was the minister of the Unitarian Church on Union and Eighth St. He had a very pleasing personality and was liked very much by young and old alike.
In the year 1892 Mr. Potter tendered his resignation and Mr. Frothingham then became minister of the church.
It wasn’t long after Mr. Frothingham became minister that he began looking around to see what he would do to improve the community. With Mrs. Frothingham they started a club for girls, called ‘Girls Social Union’ they met in the chapel of the Unitarian Church. There were classes in sewing, millnery, & cooking, besides having fun playing all sorts of games. This was given free of charge to any girl who was interested in becoming a member.
In 1894 it was decided to hire rooms in the North end of the city 1651 Purchase St. where the girls could meet and they would be nearer their homes as they all lived in the north end of the city. It was in the same rooms Mr. Frothingham established a free kindergarten and secured a trained teacher for the children. Later this kindergarten was taken over by the city and called the ‘North End Day Nursery.’
The beginning of this movement is quite interesting, for at that time a Bohemian man living in the north end, having read of the day nursery and of a sermon by Mr. Frothingham translated was deeply impressed, and said this is what I believe, and would like my children to go to the Sunday school where Mr. Frothingham is the minister. The children went to Sunday school, soon other children joined, and this was the beginning of our [church]. Don’t know the exact year but think it might [be] 1896 or 1897.
In other words, back in the early 20th C., at least one Unitarian church was willing to promote outreach to recent immigrants.
Most immigrants were trying to chuck their heritage though… there was a Dutch Unitarian Church in Chicago which rapidly shed it’s Dutchness and joined the American (English speaking) Churches in Chicago.
The same struggle went on within the Dutch Reformed Churches (my grandparents going to Dutch services they couldn’t understand). The issue split the Dutch Churches although the Dutch speakers probably the more durable Churches as they set up their own schools while the English oriented ones eventually left the reformed Churches for whatever the more convenient protestant Church happened to be… in my Dad’s case a Congregational one.
Growing up across the Street from one of America’s largest concentration of Czechs, Slovaks, and Moravians (Berwyn, Ill) where one can still find a Sokol Tabor proudly named for the Taborite Armies that slew the German Emperor’s Catholic Armies and butchered the Priests for refusing to offer communion in both kinds.. the flaming Chalice we reached out and took from Bohemians carries a slightly different symbolism for me. These were the same folks who gave us the Howitzer and made it mobile to boot placing it on a wagon.
Anyways, welcome back to Chicago, and I enjoy this kind of historical research because I think when of the best ways to understand our faith to day is too look back on each of our Churches history… we don’t do enough of it… but it takes a lot of work.
Dan, check “The Boston Religion” for references to Unitarian congregations established for Italian immigrants, too. There were a number of these initiatives. And in the upper Midwest, there were Unitarian churches founded by Norwegian and Icelandic farmers, a few of which continue today.
Another interesting immigrant Church story from Chicago is the seminary Cardinal Mundelein built in Mundelein, Illinois. It looks like Colonial Williamsburg and was built just as Rockefeller was restoring the real Williamsburg. Mundelein was out to make the Catholic Church an American Church and he wanted the seminary to look American.
Mundelein’s opponents in all of this were the Polish Priests in Chicago who represented huge parishes. It’s why to this day Priests in the Chicago Archdioces are rotated every few years to keep them from building power bases.
Mundelien never quite succeeded though, so we still had crazy things like an intersection in Cicero not far from where I grew up with three Catholic Churches: one Polish, one Slovak, and one Italian offering second services in Spanish. It was agony for the Church to afford all of this… and agony to get it down to just one Church.
Chicago Public schools by the way were bilingual English, and German and almost tringual English, German, and Polish until 1917.. .when they went all English…
Remember Dan, you’re supposed to take a LOT of pictures and claim it’s haunted.