Re: “To Serve is to Rule” essay by Doug Henwood, Harper’s Magazine, November 2019, p. 37-45. https://harpers.org/archive/2019/11/to-serve-is-to-rule-wasps-doug-henwood/
One a day early in 1882 a dust-covered young gentleman, newly arrived by rail from the East, rode the stage from Benson to Tombstone, regaled en route by the driver’s tales of a holdup on the line the previous year and a gunfight that past October behind a corral only a block from where that young man would build his church. He was Endicott Peabody, seminarian on leave from Episcopal Theological Seminary, whom the town fathers had invited west. And he saw that church building to completion by the fall of that year. (“The oldest Episcopal Church in Arizona, and the only Adobe Gothic Revival church in the world”--current advertisement.) He had a fine time introducing muscular Christianity to the magnates and miners of the boom town at the height of its prosperity. Then, feeling his talents better deployed as rector of a boys’ school than of a parish, he went home and founded Groton. Readers of Henwood’s essay will be pleased to learn that Endicott Peabody Day is now a feast day in the Episcopal diocese of Arizona, and its celebration this November 17th will be led by the Rt. Rev. Jennifer Reddall, and led by the current pastor, the Rev. Heather Rose. As one who has served in the same pulpit as Peabody, for the same length of time, -- only 135 years later -- I wouldn’t miss this celebration. P.S. Peabody presided at the wedding of Eleanor Roosevelt to her cousin Franklin, the latter of whom paid tribute to his former schoolmaster by saying: “I’m still afraid of the old son of a bitch.”
The Rev. Dr. John R. Leech
Tucson, Arizona.
October 21, 2019.
“Preacher in Helldorado” by Henry Walker, Journal of Arizona History, 1974
Thomas Peterson, MA thesis on Tombstone stage lines.
