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Alan J. Heavens a Wealthy Parish” “No Longer 11 Edward Miller Jefferys’s first years as St. Peter’s rector were ones of steady growth in membership, income, and outreach to the neighborhood. ἀ is initial success was probably gratifying to Jefferys, who had not been the vestry’s first choice to succeed Richard H. Nelson when the latter was called as bishop coadjutor of Albany in 1904. ἀ e vestry had wanted ἀ omas F. Davies Jr., the son of the former rector, but he turned the vestry down, after which the job remained vacant for almost two years. Nelson had left the church in remarkably good condition, but twenty-four months under the part-time leadership of interim rector William Groton, dean of the Philadelphia Divinity School, led some already wavering parishioners to go elsewhere. Among Nelson’s major achievements had been to establish the choir school, which would be St. Peter’s life raft from the Great Depression through the late 1950s. Nelson was also able to build up the endowment fund, which also would serve the church well during hard times later in the century. ἀ e vestry’s disappointment with the younger Davies’s decision not to become rector was apparent when it voted, as the minutes state, to open the position to Jefferys “and all the clergy of the church in the United States.” ἀ is wasn’t the first time the position had gone unfilled for a lengthy period, nor would it be the last. 140 St. Peter’s Church: Faith in Action for 250 Years 140 St. Peter’s Church: Faith in Action for 250 Years Earlier, Dr. William H. Vibbert (who lasted in the job slightly more than a year before a better offer came from Trinity Church, Wall Street) was not hired until May 1890, almost a year after the elder Davies had resigned to become bishop of Michigan. Jefferys was the first Philadelphia-born rector at St. Peter’s since Odenheimer. His father, Charles Peter Beauchamp Jefferys Sr., had been a pew holder and Sunday school teacher at St. Peter’s; his late brother, C.P.B. Jefferys Jr., had spent his entire career as a priest as an assistant at the church. Another brother, Harry, an insurance executive, served on the vestry and at the Church of the Holy Comforter, the St. Peter’s mission church at 19th and Titan Streets, for decades. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and Berkeley Divinity School, Jefferys became vicar of St. Peter’s House under Davies; he then followed Davies to Michigan and was an assistant rector of St. John’s in Detroit. Rectorships in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and in Cumberland, Maryland, followed. Jefferys had been on the short list for rector at St. Peter’s in 1891, when the vestry decided instead to hire James Lewis Parks, who was to serve less than five years before becoming rector of Cavalry Church in New York City. Parks was replaced by Nelson. At first, it was easy for Jefferys to build on Nelson’s legacy. ἀ e new rector culled the communicant list of more than two hundred names, including members who, he said, had been dead for fifteen years. He also led the church through its 150th anniversary in 1911, a year before St. Peter’s membership reached its peak of 1,026 communicants. ἀ at number did not include more than five hundred children who had not yet been confirmed, and it will never account for the numbers of neighborhood residents served by the church’s outreach efforts at St. Peter’s House. A review of the names and addresses of communicants in the 1911 yearbook shows that no single section of the city predominated. ἀ e old families—the Madeiras, Binneys, Binghams, McCalls, and Biddles—continued to be well represented , which was hardly surprising, for St. Peter’s, as Robert Shackleton noted in his Book of Philadelphia (1918), was first and foremost a “society church.” In Shackleton’s words, ἀ ere is no obvious reason why this church should be a more aristocratic church than the still older Christ Church or the church on Rittenhouse Square [Holy Trinity]. . . . But “facts is facts, and not to be drove” as I think it was Sairy Gamp who observed. ἀ e church is especially notable because it stands in its own graveyard; and this is seriously or half-seriously given as one cause of its exclusiveness. [3.139.81.58] Project...

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