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| The Sons of George Washington Doane by Henry Inman |
As the year 1832 opened, Eliza Doane, at the age of 42, was pregnant again. On March 2, 1832, she gave birth to another boy; the child was named William Croswell Doane.
Postpartum depression generally sets in four to six weeks after giving birth and may last for months. Eliza may have been particularly at risk at her age of 42. Eliza was a sweet and rather child-like woman, capable of being quite happy and radiating joy to those around her, but she had fallen into a deep depression eight years earlier after the death of her first son to the point where she and her first husband had to travel for a year in Europe. After the birth of little Willie Eliza again fell into depression. “It pleased God to bring a shadow over the house, by which half of its light was eclipsed” and their home became a place of “deep domestic sorrow.”
While George Doane was concerned for the state of his wife and effusive in his delight for his progeny, he seems to have written little about his Perkins stepchildren. There is no doubt that Sarah Perkins played an outsized role in raising her grandchildren owing to their mother’s illnesses and their father’s early death. And perhaps the Perkins children were not that interested in their new stepfamily; three weeks after the birth of her half-brother, fourteen-year-old Sarah Perkins wrote a chatty letter to her cousin John Murray Forbes in Canton, China, and never mentioned the recent new arrival in her family:
March 25, 1832, Boston
My dearest Johnny, - I have been trying for a long time to write you, but have had no time; I suppose you will say to yourself – “I do abhor these letters that are always beginning with excuses,” but you know your “sweetheart” is an exception. And in the first place, my dear coz, I must needs inform you of the new engagement. I think I hear you say, “What can it be?” It is Miss Elizabeth Sturgis to Mr. Henry Grue. There is another gone for you, Johnny! You must take care…
Fanny goes to riding school and is now quite expert in the equestrian art. Teddy and I expect to go tomorrow and anticipate a great deal of pleasure with her then. … Mother desires to be affectionately remembered to you as well as Teddy, Charly and Henry whom I suppose you have almost forgotten. Merciful conscience! I am quite surprised to see how much I have written. I never wrote so much to anyone before, I heartily pity you for having to read such a pack of nonsense.
I often think of you, dear John, and I assure you again that “as turns the impatient needle to the pole, so turns my heart to thee, though mountains rise and oceans roll between us.” You may call this amazingly sentimental, but if you do so, excuse it. You know school girls have fits sometimes.
(Finished by her mother.)
Sarah has gone to school and had not time to conclude. She begged me to do it for her and to be sure and say “dear John, very sincerely yours, Sady.”
Jenny Trumbull didn’t mention it in her journal either:
“May 3d. 1832 Grandmother Trumbull has come home and Cousin Margaret and Cousin Fanny escorted her home... Grandmother brought us each a very pretty book for which we [are] very much obliged to her. When I was three years old Grandmother took me to Boston and I had a very good time. I cannot remember the particulars as I was very young and it is six years ago…. Aunt Susan [Ripley] has sent us some maple sugar for which we were very much obliged to her. She sent a great box full and we are going to send a piece to [the Perkins family in] Boston as they do not have it there and they are very fond of it. “
Bishop Griswold was always annoyed at being called a “Low-Churchman”. He was doing his best to navigate between the High and the Low Church factions of his diocese. "There are two extremes in which we naturally and too often err. . . . The one is, undue reliance upon religious rites, and . . . the other is too little reverence for the sacraments and other institutions of Christ and his Apostles. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of religious life. They are perils to which we of the Episcopal Church, with all our best intentions to steer a middle course, are much exposed."
In fact, the bishop held little real control – the Standing Committee and everything else of importance in the Diocese were in the hands of George Washington Doane and his High-Church colleagues. When the Rev. James S. Stone arrived in Boston that year, he discovered that "he had approached a mountain which from a distance had seemed quiet and beautiful," only to find it "covered with a somewhat large proportion of the lava and ashes to be thrown up by its sudden volcanic explosion."
The Massachusetts Diocesan Convention met on the 20th of June. The Rev. Mr. Doane seemed confident that he and his friends would be reelected to the Standing committee. Doane was in fact reelected, but the other seats were surprisingly filled by low-churchmen, and when it came to electing Deputies to General Convention of the National Church, Doane suddenly found himself on the short side of the vote. He made a desperate move late in the convention to invalidate the balloting with some parliamentary maneuvering; failing at this he published a "Manifesto" impugning the Bishop and his friends, and continued to scheme to procure a seat at the General Convention. When it came to light that Hopkins had voted with the Low Churchmen to prevent Doane from reelection on the Standing Committee, and also to defeat his election as a deputy to General Convention, the relations between the two reached a new low.
Only his old friend William Croswell seemed to appreciate Doane:
I could liken your pleasantry, to nothing but that of some of our glorious English Martyrs, when they were going to the stake, to the ‘awful mirth’ of the 100th Psalm.
It thus came as a relief to all parties when in early October unexpected news arrived in the form of a letter from the Diocese of New Jersey addressed to the Reverend George Washington Doane:
To G W DNew Brunswick Oct 3 1882
Rev and Dear Sir
We take the earliest opportunity to inform you that at the adjourned meeting of our Convention, held here this day, you were elected Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in this Diocese. After several balloting, the other candidates were gradually withdrawn, and a majority of both orders proved to be in favour of you. It was then unanimously declared that you were elected Bishop. We believe we may safely say that your election gives general satisfaction, and we hope it may meet your acceptance. …
On October 6th, a committee from New Jersey met with Doane in Boston to officially announce his election as their next bishop, and to let him know that, as the General Convention of the national church was to assemble in New York in less than twelve days, it was much desired that his Consecration should take place at that date. Upon having received the news, Reverend Doane “came with trembling to announce it to his family, pale with surprise, and the overwhelming sense of unexpected responsibility.”
When news of the election was spoken of during a casual meeting of several leading clergymen, surprise was expressed that the Rector of Trinity Church, Boston, would even think of taking charge of a diocese which had less than twenty clergymen and was still struggling to rebound from the dislodgment of the Anglican Church from the colonies fifty years prior. But Doane saw the challenge: “Our churches are few. Our parishes feeble. Our people poor. But how much larger was the land promised to the fathers of the old covenant, the scene of the wonders, and cradle of the glories of the new? How much more in number were the Churches of Christ, which even St. John lived to behold established in the earth?...
On October 15th Doane departed Boston for New York in the company of his friend William Croswell:
Days much to be remembered! Arrived at St Paul's Chapel in time to hear nearly all the sermon at the opening of the Convention, by the Rt. Rev H. U. Onderdonk, D.D., and received the Holy Communion at the hands of Bps. Griswold and Brownell. It was soothing and comfortable, and I hope profitable. Never did I so much need its strengthening and refreshing for my soul.
Viewing it as a “call to the highest order of the Ministry…a voice from God,” on the 19th of October “after (I hope) due consideration, not without prayer” Doane communicated to the Committee his letter of acceptance. Twelve days later, on October 31, 1832, he was consecrated as Bishop of New Jersey during the General Convention in New York City. This was a notable Convention, for the House of Bishops, which numbered only thirteen when the session opened, added four new Bishops before it closed: Bishop Doane, Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, Bishop Benjamin B. Smith of Kentucky, and Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine of Ohio.
1832 - Another year departed. No death, no sickness, no disaster. Former mercies still preserved, and new and greater added. Lord as thou increasest our gifts, increase also our gratitude. Nor, shouldest thou withdraw them from us, leave us unresigned, and therefore comfortless. Thus ends a year by far the most eventful of my life. Blessed, in the early part of it, in the birth of a sweet boy, my second child, followed on the part of my beloved wife, by severe illness and long debility.
The Summer much distracted, with dissensions in the Church at large, and attempts at division in my own Parish. Then my unlooked for, and most undeserved election to the Episcopate of New Jersey. In October, attended the General Convention, and by the special mercy of God's blessing and the generous interposition of friends, was rescued from a foul and cruel conspiracy against my character and usefulness. Consecrated on the last day of October, (every cloud being dispersed, as by a wind from the Lord,) to the office of a Bishop. The remaining three months of deep domestic sorrow: yet God be praised, diversified with manifold and great mercies.
Truly a memorable year.
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