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An Emerging Protestant Establishment: Religious Affiliation and Public Power on the Urban Frontier in Miami, 1896–1904

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Thomas A. Tweed
Thomas A. Tweed
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Extract

A photograph taken in 1896, the year of Miami's incorporation, circulated widely in periodicals of the time, and it came to symbolize the founding of the city in the local and national imagination (figure 1). “That picture has gone all over this country,” one of the men who posed for it recalled, “showing the start of Miami.” In the image seventeen men stand by the mouth of the Miami River, where workers were clearing the ground for the construction of the first tourist hotel, a building owned by a wealthy northern Protestant. For the historian, the carefully posed photograph is illuminating. Most important for the purposes of this essay, it offers hints about power relations in that urban frontier. Note the four white men dressed in their Sunday best who stand behind the workers and observe the scene. They were there that day because John Sewell, the white Baptist who supervised the crew, had hurried down the dirt street to invite "the boys" to get into the historic picture. For Sewell, “the boys” meant white mainline Protestants, each of whom had arrived relatively recently to seek his fortune.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 412 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1995

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References

1. Photograph, by Chamberlain, J. W., ], Historical Association of Southern Florida, Negative No. 66–2–1, Miami, Florida.Google ScholarSewell, John, Miami Memories, introduced by Arva Moore Parks, reprint (Miami, Fla., 1987), pp. 43–44. Sewell, Memories, p. 43. The four men soon after opened, in turn, a men's clothing store, a drug store, a general store, and a contracting business. The photograph was so important to John Sewell as a representation of the city's founding, and his role in it, that twenty-five years later he commissioned the same photographer to take another picture at the site. That time, however, only three of the seventeen men who were there in 1896 appeared—Sewell, his brother E. C, and J. E. Lummus. All three were southern mainline Protestants. All had become successful businessmen and prominent citizens. Lummus had served as alderman, and the Sewell brothers both had been mayor.Google ScholarOn interpreting photographs see Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American Photographs: Images as History: Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

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20. Jennie Ullendorff's affiliation with the local Methodist church is noted in the congregational records. On Ida Cohen's and Jessie Sewell's work for the schools see Cohen, Sketches, p. 140. For Cohen's report of his participation see Sketches, p. 21. For a list of the prominent members of the Masons, see Cohen, Sketches, pp. 66–67. Cohen's assessment of fraternal orders is in Sketches, p. 63.Google ScholarOn their social function in another city, see Fels, Tony, “Religious Assimilation in a Fraternal Organization: Jews and Freemasonry in Gilded Age San Francisco,” American Jewish History 74 (1985): 369–403.Google Scholar

21. Miami Metropolis, 21 August 1896, p. 1. Peters, Miami 1909, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

22. For an account of an incident in which Sewell coerced residents to form a “make-shift congregation” for a visiting bishop, see Sewell, Memories, pp. 121–123, 132.Google Scholar

23. “The Catholic Church Fair,” Miami Metropolis, 30 10 1896, p. 5;Google ScholarAkin, Edward N., Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron (Kent, Ohio, 1988), pp. 184, 129, 208.Google Scholar There is evidence that Flagler's ecumenical concerns, and interest in Catholicism, extended to his private life. See Henry Flagler to J. A. McDonald, 5 November 1908, Pero Papers, Historical Museum of Southern Florida. To some observers, Flagler seemed a bit too tolerant. One traveler offered him some friendly business advice in a letter mailed in 1898, complaining that he employed too many Irish Catholics in his hotels. See Henry Flagler to J. A. McDonald, 5 November 1908, Pero Papers. Anonymous to Henry Flagler, 28 March 1898, Pero Papers.

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27. The diary excerpts are in Cohen, Sketches, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

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31. The strong representation of evangelical Protestantism, especially Baptist and Methodist piety, among the local public leaders and church members suggests significant parallels with the wider history of religion in the South. See Mathews, Donald G., Religion in the Old South (Chicago, 1977).Google ScholarOn religious life in Florida as part of the southern region, see Hill, Samuel S., “Florida,” in Religion in the Southern States: A Historical Study, ed. Hill, Samuel S. (Macon, Ga., 1983).Google Scholar

32. On church membership in Dade County, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies: 1906 (Washington, D.C., 1910), 1:302.Google ScholarOn religious affiliation in the South, see U.S. Census, Religious Bodies: 1906 (Washington, D.C., 1910), 1:46–47.Google ScholarSee also the table in Grantham, Dewey W., Southern Progressivism (Knoxville, Tenn., 1983), p. 20.Google Scholar

33. Peters, , Miami 1909, pp. 174–181.Google ScholarOn Ida Nelson, see the biographical portrait, “MrsNelson, Edwin,” typescript, archives, First United Methodist Church, Miami. George, Paul S., “Bootleggers, Prohibitionists, and Police: The Temperance Movement in Miami, 1896–1920,” Tequesta 39 (1979): 34–41.Google Scholar

34. Several fine historical and sociological studies of urban religion have appeared. Among them are Hackett, David G., The Rude Hand of Innovation: Religion and Social Order in Albany, New York, 1652–1836 (New York, 1991)Google Scholarand Demerath, N. J. III and Williams, Rhys H., A Bridging of Faiths: Religion and Politics in a New England City (Princeton, N.J., 1992).Google Scholar Here I use two works in particular to illumine developments in Miami and identify transregional patterns: Engh, Michael E., Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846–1888 (Albuquerque, N.M., 1992)Google Scholarand Lewis, James W., The Protestant Experience in Gary, Indiana, 1906–1975: At Home in the City (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992).Google ScholarOn Los Angeles see also Singleton, Gregory H., Religion in the City of Angels: American Protestant Culture and Urbanization, Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979).Google ScholarI also consulted Cristiano's, Kevin J.Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890–1906 (Cambridge, U.K., 1987). Lewis, Protestant Experience, p. 16.Google Scholar