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• 1 media/Rev Stephen H Battin239.jpg 2019-11-27T17:03:40-08:00 Rev. Stephen Henry Battin, Fifth Rector of Trinity, 1858-1863 10 plain 2020-09-14T11:10:46-07:00 Stephen Henry Battin was born in New York on 6 June 1814. He graduated from General Theological Seminary in 1842 at the height of the Oxford Movement but also spent time at Nashotah House, where he was enumerated on the federal census in 1850. An early call came to the rectorship of Christ Church, Cooperstown, an established parish supported by the author, James Fenimore Cooper. Battin had a strong head for business and kept detailed accounts of his expenditures there, and his business sense may have appealed to Trinity's vestry when they extended a call to him at the end of 1858. Battin had also earned a reputation as a teacher and had conducted a successful parochial school that met daily for four hours for students aged seven to fifteen.
  
  Battin had married Catherine Van Wyck in Sing Sing, New York, on 17 August 1842. They had only one surviving daughter, Catherine or "Kate," who was 14 when Battin arrived in Fort Wayne. Together they opened almost immediately a girl's school in their home with Kate as a co-teacher. The school was opened for four hours a day at a tuition of between $2 and $5 per term. It consisted of both a primary department and a higher education program of English, Latin and French. Musical instruction was also offered, and the afternoons were sometimes spent on field trips touring local factories.
  
  With the chapel and parsonage now finished, if imperfectly constructed, the Ladies Sewing Society of the parish began hosting early public fairs at the local Rockhill House hotel, at which they sold food and a variety of knitted items. Each year the entertainment became increasingly elaborate, and one year a fashion show was conducted, with parishioners wearing various European costumes.
  
  The outbreak of the Civil War divided the Fort Wayne community. Bishop George Upfold forbade any clergy in the diocese from speaking out about slavery from the pulpit in an effort to tamp down the strong feeling of political partisanship. Battin, an abolitionist and temperance advocate, lent his support to the Union cause and offered prayers for the soldiers departing for the front. Also during this period Battin organized Trinity's first choir at a cost of $30, likely an unvested quartet of men and women who were paid to sing professionally each week. The choir came about at a time of increased attention to church music and the appearance of a new hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861, which had a profound change on hymn singing and the proliferation of standard tunes. Kate Battin would often play the organ, but Franklin Randall, a parishioner, complained that her playing sounded like "grinding." Battin also raised funds for domestic missionary work in the West and supported local temperance efforts.
  
  In 1863, when the vestry began making plans to build a new church building, it decided that Battin was not the priest to lead them in this effort. In July, they asked for and received his letter of resignation. He moved from Fort Wayne to Bergen, New Jersey, and later to Jersey City, where he helped build Christ Church using $30,000 of his own money in his will. He died at Jersey City on 23 February 1893. He is buried in Dale Cemetery, Ossining, Westchester County, New York.