Rev. William Rainsford: 

An Amazing Divine

The Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford was an amazing man of many contrasts. 

One of his closest friends was among richest men in America, yet he spent much of his life fighting for and ministering to the poor. 

Despite fragile health and at least two nervous breakdowns, he virtually single-handedly turned a shrinking, debt-ridden Manhattan church into one of the largest and most successful parishes in New York City. 

A man who spent most of his life in cities, he sought rejuvenation hunting big game in Africa, California and western Canada, and counted fellow hunters Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill among his friends. 

Many people — including editors of The New York Times — considered him a Ridgefielder, but while he often worshipped here, he never quite lived here — though he came about as close as one could get.

William Stephen Rainsford was born in 1850 in Dublin, Ireland, where his father, an Episcopal minister, was chaplain at a hospital for the blind. As a boy, he wasn’t much of a student, admitting later that “I was dull and stupid at Latin and Greek, and very shy.”

Nonetheless, he graduated from Cambridge University. While still a student there,  he became ill and took a leave from his studies, during which he became interested in the London slums and spent time working among the poor. After graduating from university, Rainsford organized a group of 800 people from the London tenements and led them on a journey to western Canada to find new and more promising lives for themselves.

While in Canada, he was introduced to hunting, especially for big game. He shot buffalo, caribou and other large animals, and the sport became a lifelong interest. In his later years he wound up advising world leaders on the best hunting locations, writing a book on African hunting, and heading a museum expedition to find rare specimens.

Rainsford returned to England where he became an Episcopal minister and continued to address the needs of the poor, especially in the East Anglian city of Norwich. He suffered throughout his life with depression and at one point during his four years in Norwich, he considered resigning as a minister.

However, in the 1870s, an opportunity arose to fill a temporary post in New York City and he wound up preaching and leading missions in several places in the United States and Canada, gaining a reputation as an outspoken, caring preacher. 

In 1882, word of his talents reached the vestry of St. George’s Church at Stuyvesant Square on the lower east side of Manhattan. Once one of the wealthier parishes in New York City, St. George’s was seriously in debt, having lost many members as area neighborhoods became more populated with poor immigrants — mostly Germans — living in tenements. “Parishioners were moving uptown and transferring their allegiance to more fashionable and conveniently located churches,” The New York Times reported.

Rainsford was invited to be interviewed for the position of rector. After a meeting with the vestry, he was offered the job. He agreed, but only if the vestry accepted three provisions.

“You must make the church free,” he said. No more charging rents for pews.

In addition, the vestry must “discharge all committees except the vestry, so as to leave me with entirely free hands.”

Finally, he said,  “Give me $10,000 a year for three years to use in parish work as I see fit, without asking anybody’s consent.” $10,000 in 1882 was the equivalent of about $275,000 today.

Jaws dropped. The vestrymen looked at one another. Suddenly, one of them spoke. 

“Done!” said J. Pierpont Morgan.

Rainsford and J.P. Morgan, the wealthy financier whom one historian called “the greatest American banker,” wound up being lifelong friends and it was Morgan who would bring the minister to the edge of Ridgefield.

When Rainsford took over, St. George’s was $35,000 in debt. In the first month of his leadership, seven of the 14 families still left in the parish departed — probably in reaction to his liberal views. 

When he retired 25 years later, St. George’s had a membership of more than 4,000 people, and a sizable endowment.

“Under his vigorous direction, the church rapidly widened its work,” The Times said in 1933. “Clubs, schools, athletic rooms, camps on the shore and in the mountains, sanitariums, classes for mothers, missions and other activities came into being.” He set up soup kitchens, established schools to teach trades, addressed problems of teenage boys and girls, and ran weekly musical and literary programs with an admission charge of five cents. He was trying to deal with the needs of everyone —young and old, rich and poor, male and female — in his neighborhood.

Even services changed.  “The choir was enlarged and removed from its high gallery, and congregational singing introduced,” said a  profile of Rainsford in a Cleveland newspaper.  

And he continued to speak out about issues few Episcopal clergy were addressing. “In the pulpit he dared to talk of things which were not considered sermon material,” The Times said. “He mentioned such subjects as birth control, and talked in no uncertain terms of the city’s vice problem.”

In an 1886 article in The Churchman, an Anglican journal still published today, Rainsford said “the tendency of modern Protestantism, inside as well as outside the Protestant Episcopal Church, is to build up our church life too distinctly on social lines: The mission chapel for the poor, the beautiful avenue church for the rich and well-to do...We don’t want a church for rich men as such, nor yet poor as poor, but churches that by practice as well as precept, tell the community around them that the house of God is the house of man.”

Perhaps it was his desire for a less lavish “avenue church” that led the parish in 1889 to have the tall, showy spires removed from the church’s two towers.

In 1894, a time when other white Episcopal churches in the city flatly banned black people, Rainsford proposed hiring Henry Thacker Burleigh, a black singer, as soloist. When it came to a decision by the vestry, J.P. Morgan cast the tie-breaking vote in Burleigh’s favor. The singer went on to serve as the church’s soloist for 52 years during which time he became nationally recognized as a composer of many songs and pieces of classical music. (While a scholarship student at the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in New York, Burleigh had earned money there as a janitor and was overheard by Antonin Dvorak singing Negro spirituals as he worked. Dvorak befriended him and used themes from songs Burleigh sang for him in composing his Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.”)

Despite being an Episcopal minister in banker Morgan’s parish, “he attracted wide attention by his outspoken criticism of the lavish entertainment furnished at a society ball when there was much suffering among the city’s poor.” He called for the ball’s cancellation.

In 1900 he shocked many Christians by declaring: “There is no terrible judgment ahead, no physically burning in hell. That judgment is a process here and now. The Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom existing in men’s hearts.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he stirred controversy with his colorful language. In a 1901 address to a Philadelphia trade organization, he criticized charges that Christian missionaries in China were responsible for the insurrection and other problems happening there and declared, “It’s all damned rot!” The D-word then was nearly tantamount to the F-word today. And many religious leaders, said the Philadelphia Inquirer, “do not approve of New York divine’s vigorous language.” (In a talk in Ridgefield later in his life,  he is reported to have uttered a “God damn.”)  

During his quarter century at St. George’s, Rainsford gained a national reputation as both a speaker and writer. And when in 1904, he suddenly took a leave of absence and set sail for Europe for an “indefinite rest,” newspapers around the country carried the story. “Dr. Rainsford made no announcement of his going, and it was greatly against his will that he decided to obey the orders of his physicians,” said The Idaho Statesman, which then quoted the minister’s physician as saying, “Dr. Rainsford is troubled with gout and rheumatism due to overwork.” Others reported he’d had a nervous breakdown, the second in his career.

Rainsford never returned to his position as rector of St. George’s Parish. In 1906, in a letter from Cairo, Egypt, he resigned. Six years later he also asked to be relieved of his ministerial position in the Episcopal Church.

Dr. Rainsford went through a lengthy recuperation that involved rest, travel, and his favorite pastime, big game hunting. In 1912 he headed an American Museum of Natural History expedition in search of black rhinoceros specimens in remote regions of East Africa. He advised — and is said to have hunted with — President Theodore Roosevelt; Rainsford’s book on hunting in Africa, “Land of the Lion,” was in Roosevelt’s personal library at Sagamore Hill. 

He continued to be in demand as a speaker, and his opinions remained controversial. In one of his last public appearances,  a 1925 lecture at Town Hall in New York, he maintained that young people could not accept the ‘old religion.’ “Banish the supernatural,” he declared. “I believe in the Lord Jesus as a man, a real man. I believe he was born of the love of a good man and a good woman, as God intended all of us to be born. I believe he lived as men lived, that he died as men die, only in unparalleled torture.”

After Rainsford retired in 1906, J.P. Morgan asked him what he planned to do. Rainsford indicated he’d like to find a place in “the country,” but feared he could not afford the cost. No problem, said Morgan, who as a gift to his friend built him a retirement home on Route 35 in South Salem, N.Y., right on the Ridgefield town line. 

It was no ordinary house. The 22-room stone-and-timber mansion on a hill overlooking the Hudson Valley was designed by the highly respected architect, Grosvenor Atterbury, and Morgan is said to have brought over more than 100 Japanese craftsmen to build the place.

The estate included a large “game house” where Rainsford could display souvenirs of his safaris, including mounted specimens. (This became a “field trip” destination for local pupils early in the 20th Century. “Ridgefield school children were thrilled to visit this great big exhibition hall when their time came, about fourth grade,” recalled Ridgefield Press publisher Karl S. Nash.)

The house was located on 32 acres that Rainsford called Savin Hill. Among his visitors there over the years were President Roosevelt and, of course, J.P. Morgan. He also eventually had a place in Camden, S.C., where he would spend winters.

Today, after a long period as a restaurant called Le Château, the Rainsford house has become a wedding and banquet center, also called Le Château.

While Savin Hill was in South Salem, it was forever being misplaced. When The Architectural Digest featured the house in 1919, the periodical said it was in Ridgefield, Conn. Even when Rainsford died in 1933 in a New York City hospital, The New York Times said he had entered the hospital a month earlier after breaking his wrist “in a fall at his home in Ridgefield, Conn.”

He was 83 years old at his death.

Rainsford had a more than passing interest in St. Stephen’s Church in Ridgefield. He often worshipped there, sometimes preached there, and contributed money to its coffers. He also occasionally offered his opinions on its management. In 1924, he wrote the vestry, recommending that it seek a more varied membership instead of just  rich old men. “In my judgment — and I have had perhaps somewhat unusual opportunity for gaining experience — vestries in our church are too frequently drawn from one class,” he said. “Why not try to get some stirring, God-fearing young man on the Saint Stephen’s Vestry.” 

“The vestry took no action on his suggestion,” said St. Stephen’s historian Robert S. Haight, “and it was not until almost thirty years later that the self-perpetuation of Saint Stephen’s vestries was successfully challenged.”

Rainsford had another interest in St. Stephen’s: His son, architect W. Kerr Rainsford, designed the church building, completed in 1915. Kerr Rainsford also designed the War Memorial at the head of Branchville Road. 

Dr. Newton Shaffer:
Helping the Crippled

On Sept. 2, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting Pittsfield, Mass. While traveling through the town, his horse-drawn carriage was struck by a speeding trolley. Roosevelt’s carriage was thrown 40 feet and his Secret Service agent was “ground under the heavy machinery of the car into an unrecognizable mass” — the first Secret Service agent ever to die in the line of duty.

The president was hurled to the ground. The impact broke a bone in his leg and lead to an infection that took more than two months to heal. The injury occasionally flared up during the rest of his life.

The president’s condition that autumn worried Dr. Newton Shaffer, a longtime friend of the Roosevelt family. Shaffer was also one of the country’s first orthopedic surgeons and probably the top man in the field in the late 19th Century.

On Oct. 2, he wrote Roosevelt at the White House:

My dear Mr. President

The time is coming — I hope it may be soon — when [Surgeon General] Dr. [Presley Marion] Rixey will permit you to go out. 

When that time comes, the stairs must be considered, and I have sent you a special chair, made by Sargeant of New York, which will permit you easy transportation up and down stairs. 

It looks quite complicated in its folded condition, but your man will easily unravel the mystery, and as the arms can be placed at any angle, your easy transportation with two steady pairs of hands is assured.

Please accept it with my kind regards and best wishes.”

The president was grateful for the gift, especially from Dr. Shaffer. After all, the president’s father had championed Shaffer 30 years earlier as a pioneer in the field of orthopedic surgery and the president had recently backed the creation of Shaffer’s innovative hospital for crippled children.

The son of a minister, Newton Melman Shaffer was born in Kinderhook, N.Y., in 1846, grew up in the Hudson River Valley and received his medical degree from New York University in 1867. He began his career at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled and started specializing in orthopedic surgery. 

His work there caught the attention of Theodore Roosevelt Sr., father of the future president and a prominent businessman and philanthropist. Known as “Thee,” he had been a founder of the  Orthopaedic Dispensary and Hospital (now part of Columbia University Medical Center). In 1871 he convinced Shaffer to become a surgeon at the hospital and then take over management of it. 

A few years later, Roosevelt Sr. persuaded Shaffer to also serve as the first orthopedic surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. There, he “attained worldwide eminence as a leader in that

important department of science,” said Willis Fletcher Johnson’s 1903 history of New York University.

In the 1880s and 90s, he was also professor of orthopedic surgery at NYU and then joined Cornell Medical School. He was instrumental in founding the American Orthopaedic Association.

Shaffer’s specialty was children, particularly those whose bones had been ravaged by the effects of tuberculosis. “He long contended and has practically demonstrated that many of the cutting operations commonly performed for the relief of the deformed are unnecessary,” Johnson said. 

In 1898, Shaffer had delivered a widely publicized paper on “The Care of Crippled and Deformed Children” in which he described “the large number of these unfortunates who were being only half cared for by the existing medical institutions” of the State of New York, the New England Journal of Medicine reported.

Two years later, with support from the state, Shaffer founded the New York State Hospital for Crippled and Deformed Children, refashioning an estate overlooking the Hudson River. The bill providing funding for the hospital was signed by New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt.

The institution has become today’s Helen Hayes Hospital, the nation’s first free-standing, state-operated hospital dedicated to the treatment of people with physical disabilities. Occupying a 105-acre campus in West Haverstraw, the 155-bed hospital was renamed in 1974 to honor actress Helen Hayes, who spent 49 years on its board of directors and was “a tireless advocate” for the facility.

Around the turn of the 20th Century, Shaffer decided to build a country place in Ridgefield off

the east side of Wilton Road West, a ridge where the British encamped after the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. The farmland overlooked Long Island Sound where British ships awaited the troops. Fires from the ridge signaled the ships that the soldiers would arrive in Norwalk the next day. Shaffer knew this and called his estate “Beacon Hill Cottage.” The house still stands today, but some of the features including expansive porches and five of the six chimneys were removed by later owners. Much of the estate land is now part of the Soundview Road development.

Over his career, Shaffer also invented many instruments and mechanical devices for use in orthopedic surgery. He continued to oversee his children’s hospital, do research, and write books and papers until his death in 1928 at the age of 82.