God Giveth the Increase, Robert and Wynona Wilkins’ denominational history of North Dakota, was published in 1959. It’s typical of many similar studies of the Episcopal church on the Great Plains; volumes of comparable size and perspective were written for South Dakota and Kansas about the same time. Fascinated by the split fieldstone churches that I had seen at places like Casselton, Buffalo, and Lisbon, the Wilkinses’ study was a first step toward understanding the newly-formed missionary diocese of northern Dakota and its powerful corporate image.

Now, here’s the rub. Mid-century academic historians like UND’s Robert Wilkins understood the power of ideas and of the people who acted upon them. They were much less comfortable with material culture (a speculation I’ve expressed here earlier) and God Giveth the Increase makes the point: statistical data are given a human face–specific bishops, clergy and laity–and buildings are used to demonstrate the denomination’s physical presence; prominent doctors, lawyers and bankers are invoked, but the name of an architect never appears in print. Do you think I’m being overly sensitive?

St. Stephen’s Episopcal Church, Casselton, ND (1885-1887) by George Hancock, architect. These HABS drawings were prepared by students of NDSU Professor Steve Martens’ seminar in historic preservation.

Early in my own naive investigation of Dakota’s early church architecture, I had the audacity to contact Professor Wilkins, whose response was distant; today you might call it patronizing. I’ll get over it. I do, however, want to acknowledge the window he opened for me into patterns of parish operation and governance. In Dakota, the diocese depended on the labors of yeoman clergy, Episcopal priests as virtual circuit riders in a place without infrastructure. Bishops were often absent in New York or Chicago, trolling for cash, which left many decisions to parish leaders.

I have worked with this Dakota material long enough to draw some cautious parallels with rural Iowa a decade or two earlier. And my imagined history of Saint Joseph-the-Carpenter grows from thirty years of this background research.

Two years ago Howard Tabor took a walk. It was the early evening of Election Day and he’d become stressed by too many talking heads repeating themselves without end. So Howard and his dog Digger strolled over to claim three pints of green tomato chutney from Aunt Phyllis.

On the way home, he was seized by the beauty of Agincourt’s Episcopal church, St. Joseph-the-Carpenter. Gerry Leiden and the choir were rehearsing the Christmas “Festival of Lessons and Carols” and their harmonies wafted through open doors across a smokey autumn landscape. Howard and Digger slipped into a back pew and gave themselves over to reverie. Oddly, his column on Saturday dealt with architecture; not a word about election results. I wonder where he’ll be tomorrow night.

I knew Agincourt would have an Episcopal church. The Power of their Glory, a book about the disproportional role of Episcopalians in America’s political and economic life, joked that “Episcopal isn’t a denomination; it’s an income tax bracket.” The humor has some basis in fact. But what to name the parish? “High Church” or Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians have been on my radar for thirty-plus years I’ve investigated North Dakota’s fieldstone churches from the 1880s. So I toyed with St. Mary-the-Virgin or Transfiguration, or English saints like Aidan, Swithin or Chad. Then it occurred to me that Papists give plenty of air time to Joseph, the foster father, while Anglicans practically ignore him. Why not St. Joseph-the-Carpenter?

It was an interesting but (I thought) unusual choice–until a quick google check proved there’s already a church bearing that dedication in the Bay Area. Still, the association with a foster parent, a man who worked with his hands, offered direction for my design: this was likely to be a building of the 1870s and I was anxious to work in a “Carpenter Gothic”/”Gothic Revival” vocabulary.

St. Joe’s evolved as a three-stage design: 1) an 1878 original, perhaps by popular East Coast architect Henry Dudley; 2) an 1898 expansion by Des Moines architects Proudfoot & Bird (yes, they’re real); and 3) a chapel added in 1915 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. That last phase would also be an opportunity to involve Anson Tennant just before sailing on the Lusitania.

Buildings are rarely complete at their outset. Why should this one be different?

Part 2

What is it about books? I buy them in good faith, intrigued by a title or its cover art; then it sinks by the bedside to the bottom of a growing heap of even newer purchases. Somewhere in there a borrowed book totally disappears, has to be replaced, and then magically surfaces two days after you “returned” the new one.

Some books lie in plain sight–unread–for months, even years, until you accidentally pick one up and read straight through in the next four hours. Others can inspire us from Day One. The problem at our house is the sheer number of books compounded by the absence of a librarian; finding anything is such an archaeological dig that it’s often easier to buy a second copy. That’s what happened with Little Lives by John Howland Spyker (pseudonym of the late Richard Elman [1934-1997]). I bought mine in 1978 and now have at least three copies seeded around the house.

In the spirit of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Spyker delineates a desperate county in upstate New York through brief biographical sketches of its citizenry. Colorful characters all; denizens instantly recognized; some of them the product of pitiful genetic material. When Agincourt began to develop, I had long consigned Spyker’s Little Lives to the background soundtrack of my life. It has surfaced once again, however, a valuable reference and counterpoint for the sketches written by my friend Howard Tabor.

The hardback of 1978 and paperback the following year are its only published forms. It’s especially sad to see many ex-library copies being offered on abebooks.com; copies displaced by newer, more exciting titles–in someone’s estimation. If a copy has been deleted from your library’s shelves in the benighted interest of contemporaneity, I thought you might enjoy a glimpse at Spyker’s style.

Cack The Sissy

Born in a pesthole, sired by a lout and a jade, and treated most cruelly by both throughout his childhood, Cack the Sissy grew up in our midst to wear his nickname of opprobrium like a war decoration.

He never went to schools, and could neither read nor write.

He was ill-housed, and ill-fed, and sometimes was forced to wear women’s clothes to keep his frail body warm.

He was known to relieve himself in the church pews, and he pestered some of the little boys.

Great sport was made of Cack by others; he was called “jack-o’-lantern face” and “moon boy,” “twit” and “girly.”

Once he was taken in by a farmer on the Vaughn Road to do chores, but the man lost patience with his squeamishness, and filthy traits.

He finally found work at the Hercules plant, but fell (or was pushed) into a vat of fulminate and disolved almost to the bone.

Or how about Bonar Thomas?

He was a Welshman. He raised sheep. He lived alone. The schoolboys called him Boner.

I know very little else about the man except he had a brother with an unpronounceable name near Amsterdam, and he was trampled by an ox once in the Romaree Corral.

Some of us will leave behind little more than this.