Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana Archives

Rev. Duncan Convers

The Rev. Duncan Convers was born in Zanesville, Ohio, on 2 August 1851, the son of Theodore and Elizabeth (Hazlett) Convers. He was ordained a deacon in 1876. He served at St. Clement's Church, Philadelphia, from 1889 to 1891. He later went to the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Boston by 1898, where he began a program of having his vested choir march behind a crucifer with two cornetists through Boston's West End. Periodically he would stop and say, "We can all agree that Boston shall be a better city than it is. It can be made better only by each of us becoming better than he is." Converse was briefly in Indiana in 1902, when he had charge of St. Paul's Church at Gas City. He went from there to the Church of Our Savior in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and later to Toledo, Ohio. He then left the country and became briefly a citizen of Great Britain. However, he returned tot he U.S. in 1913 and two years later reapplied for American citizenship. He died in Massachusetts on 22 April 1929 and was buried in Gethsemane Cemetery in Foxboro.