LITMIR.BIZ

      Figure 3.2. Samuel Provoost, patriot rector of Trinity Church, first bishop of New York. (From Morgan Dix, History of Trinity Church, vol. 2 [1901].)

      During the 1790s, Trinity’s parishioners bolstered this Anglican vision, which united the larger society behind a moderate and genial Christianity. Samuel Provoost offered a rational and orthodox theology that persuaded few but likewise offended few. He exemplified familial ties and kinship alliances at the top. As Senate chaplain, and as minister of and relative to leading government officials, he embodied a tangible connection between church and government. Filled with pews arranged according to prominence and wealth, the church’s building illustrated this organic vision of all society united in a coherent whole, with the wealthiest at the front.

      From Trinity’s 1790 pew rent lists and New York City directories, I developed an occupational sketch of Trinity Church’s members. Both sources display upward bias. City directories tended to record established individuals with their own businesses and residences.⁸ Unskilled and poorer laborers would be more transient or more likely to board or share rooms, decreasing the possibility of their being listed in any given year. Likewise, pew lists record the congregation’s wealthier members. Although every church provided a few pews without charge for those who could not afford a minimal rent, such individuals did not appear in the lists. Even given these caveats, Trinity parish’s 1790s pew lists clearly portray a largely upper-class church. But because many occupations included both wealthier and poorer individuals, and because even poorer occupations appeared in the pews, an individual might scan the church building each Sunday morning and assume that Trinity represented New York as a whole.⁹

      Politicians and professionals constituted a significant percentage of pewholders. Between 16 and 18 percent of Trinity’s pewholders were in the professional and government category, a figure that more than doubled the 7 percent city average. At the beginning of the decade, John Jay served as the first Supreme Court justice of the United States, and by mid-decade he was elected governor of New York. At $17.50 annually, he paid the second-highest rent at Trinity Church, suggesting a prominent location. Jay’s brother-in-law Robert R. Livingston, who served as chancellor of the state, also paid $17.50. Both men’s pews probably overlooked the congregation from prominent spots in the gallery. Within this occupational category, the individual with the lowest pew rent, William Strong, appeared in the directory as an inspector; his rent of five dollars nevertheless placed him above the bottom decile of pewholders.¹⁰

      Retailers and merchants comprised fully half of Trinity’s pew renters. Between 46 and 54 percent were merchants, grocers, or other retailers, a number double the city average of 26 percent. Merchants such as Charles Ludlow and Edmund Seaman rented the most expensive pews prominently located in the front of the church. Not all merchants were as well-off as the Ludlows and Seamans, however, for many sat in pews priced in the middle ranges, around ten dollars annually. Grocers operated on narrow margins, and many grocery ventures were small-scale sales of produce grown just outside the city limits. A handful of small grocers and a merchant occupied the cheapest pews alongside poorer artisans, huddled in the backs of aisles or in corners of the gallery.¹¹

      The diverse and numerous artisan category included everyone from impecunious cordwainers and shoemakers to prosperous shipbuilders and silversmiths. They comprised from 19 to 22 percent of Trinity’s pewholders, half that of the 40 percent appearing in the directory, and about one-third the number of artisans historians believe resided in the city.¹² Trinity’s artisans included many in lucrative and prestigious trades. Philip Hone and Robert Carter were both cabinetmakers, whose skills were “the most refined of the mechanic branches.” If their rents are the only indication of wealth, however, the two had differing rates of success: Hone’s pew rent of $14.75 placed him in the top quintile of rent prices, whereas Carter’s $5.00 pew ranked just above the poorest rents. Hugh Gaine appears in the artisan category as a “printer-bookseller-stationer,” and his pew rent of $15.00 reveals that he had made the transition from small-scale manufacturer to overseer of a larger shop and retailer. In general, however, artisans occupied the lower rent levels, including a tailor, cooper, and shoemaker each in the bottom decile.¹³

      The lower occupational levels were especially underrepresented in Trinity’s pews: from 9 to 13 percent of Trinity’s pewholders filled the combined service-transport-marine category, also only half the city averages. Shipmaster Richard Black and branch pilot Matthew Daniel held positions of greater prestige than the typical mariner, and William Robinson, Edward Bardin, and John Battin as tavern keepers held greater sway than other service workers. All five, however, rented pews below the median rate of $10.00. Not surprisingly, the fewest pewholders in number were those identified as unskilled, the “laborer” category, making up no more than 4 percent of Trinity’s pewholders. The number of unskilled workers attending must have been higher, for those too poor to pay for pews do not appear in the lists. Further, twenty-eight males on the pew lists do not appear in the directories at all, many of whom were probably unskilled workers.¹⁴

      In the 1790s, Trinity church held a level of public prestige unmatched by other churches, for it participated in public displays associated with the new government in which other churches could not. Trinity’s parishioners also tended to be in wealthier and more prestigious occupations than even upwardly weighted city averages. Individuals from all occupational categories rented pews at Trinity, however, and as John Jay took his seat above the sanctuary, or as Charles Ludlow walked to the front of the church, they surveyed poorer individuals who worshiped with them. More important, the poorer and middling individuals who attended Trinity saw the most prominent men at their head, or above them. On any given Sunday, Trinity remained white and affluent, but it still approximated the traditional image of an organic, inclusive church.

      Anglican politicians also continued their attempt to properly educate blacks and move the state toward voluntary, gradual manumission. John Jay ascended to governor in 1795, and presided over a legislature that passed the gradual manumission law of 1799. Jay and his fellow Episcopalians in the New York Manumission Society had achieved one of the major goals that they had held at that institution’s founding in 1785. The law offered nothing for existing slaves, promising freedom only to slaves born after July 4 of that year, and then only at age twenty-eight for men and twenty-five for women. Young slave men and women thus spent many of their most productive years

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