Page 18 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 3 Spring 2013

St. James College, where Coit later taught. This was
enough to satisfy Shattuck and the board that they had
chosen a young man completely sympathetic to the
vision of the Catholic party. It now fell to Coit to test
that vision in the day-to-day operation of a school.
How did Coit go about building an Episcopal school?
Before answering that question, it is important to rec-
ognize that Coit, Shattuck, and their church existed
within a cultural context very different from ours.
The world that the passengers in the carriage were
leaving behind was neither rustic nor innocent. Six weeks
after their arrival in Millville, pro- and anti-slavery fac-
tions in Kansas would engage in mutual acts of terror.
Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, would
be seriously injured after being caned on the Senate floor
by a representative from South Carolina. As America’s
political discourse lurched toward an inevitable crisis,
the Episcopal Church continued to wage its own inter-
necine battle. This conflict, which left its imprint on
the little school at Millville, had nothing to do with the
issue of slavery. It focused instead on questions of
ecclesiastical tradition that had plagued Anglicanism
since the Reformation.
The years during and immediately after the American
Revolution were not a comfortable time for Anglicans.
Their church had been part of the Church of England.
Services included prayers for the king and his Parliament.
Although the prayers were quickly adapted to the post-
revolutionary political reality, the American church faced
suspicions of disloyalty to the new republic. The most
fervent loyalists (termed “high” in church practice) went
underground or fled to Canada, surrendering the field
to “low” churchmen, evangelicals who strove to make
their church almost indistinguishable from its Protestant
neighbors. In a stroke of what we now call “branding,”
ike the story of creation itself, the story of St. Paul’s
seems to begin in pastoral innocence. On an early
spring day in 1856, a carriage rattles westward along
Pleasant Street, carrying a young, newly married
couple, three boys, and a dog. Henry Augustus Coit and
his wife Mary, Freddie and Geordie Shattuck, and their
cousin, Horatio Bigelow, would disembark at an old inn
nestled among woods and ponds. In wholesome rustic
simplicity, St. Paul’s School would begin its life.
Their destination was Shattuck’s summer house that
he had, in his own words, “given up for a school.” A
board of trustees composed of Church of the Advent
members and influential Concordians had adopted
bylaws that stated: “No person shall be eligible as a
member of this Corporation who is not, at the time of
his election, a communicant in the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America.” The Bishop of
New Hampshire was to be an ex officio board member.
The formal structure to insure St. Paul’s identity and
an Episcopal school partial to the vision of the Catholic
party was securely in place. George Shattuck was the
architect who now transferred his plans to the builder,
Henry Augustus Coit.
The board had chosen Coit after several earlier dis-
appointments. They knew very little about him (the
one letter of recommendation came from his father)
but they could place their trust in his background. As
a boy, Coit had attended Flushing Institute, a school
sensitive to the beauty of worship and a model for
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