Stories Behind the Stones - The Presbyterians
Started in 1863, the Palisades Presbyterian church has been a haven for justice and human dignity since its founding during the US Civil War. Two of its most influential leaders, Winthrop Gilman and Fay Hollingshead Ellison, are buried nearby in the Palisades Cemetery. This article tells their remarkable stories.
From the blinker at the intersection of Closter and Oak Tree Roads, traveling east past the Post Office, cross Route 9W and you’ll soon pass a classic example of Carpenter Gothic architecture on the right that is the Palisades Presbyterian Church.
This intimate wooden structure has been a haven for justice and human dignity since its founding during the US Civil War. One way to engage with the church’s legacy is through two of its influential leaders who lived a century apart and who are both buried in the Palisades Cemetery, less than a mile from the church.
Although the Palisades Cemetery began as the Lawrence family burying ground in the late 1700s and is now a private cemetery, there are many members, elders, and deacons of the Palisades Church interred there. Unlike many churches in our area, the Palisades Church does not have its own cemetery, so members of its congregation over the years have chosen the Palisades Cemetery as their final place of rest.
As you enter the cemetery and drive around the oval lane, a large granite monument on the right stands out in the sun. It belongs to Winthrop Sargent Gilman, Jr. (1839-1923). Mr. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Palisades Presbyterian Church. Another less formidable, but no less historical, stone stands to the northeast in the shady, woodsy part of the cemetery. There lies Rev. H. Fay Hollingshead Ellison (1948-1988), who was called as the church’s first female pastor in 1975.
Winthrop Gilman Jr. (1839–1923) was born in Alton, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from Saint Louis. He was one of nine surviving children. In those days, Missouri was a slave state and Illinois was a free state. His father, a wealthy grocer named Winthrop Gilman, Sr. (1808 to 1884), had recently been involved in the Lovejoy Riot of 1837 by agreeing to help the Rev. Elijah Parrish Lovejoy, founder of the Alton Observer, an antislavery Presbyterian newspaper, hide a printing press in his three-story stone warehouse. In an event that continues to resonate in Presbyterian lore, a pro-slavery mob set the building ablaze and murdered Lovejoy. Rev. Lovejoy was buried without ceremony, except for a prayer by Presbyterian minister (and Gilman’s father-in-law) Rev. Thomas Lippencott.
After the riot, Winthrop Gilman, Sr. moved his family to New York City, where his sons had already been sent to be educated, and joined the family's banking firm. In 1861, the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church was the site of the younger Winthrop Gilman’s marriage to Anna Canfield Park, eldest daughter of Charles F. Park, a prosperous grocer in New York City. Park had recently purchased land on a hillside in Palisades (below Lamont) where he built “Seven Oaks” as a seasonal residence adjacent to the summer home of his friend, Dr. Cornelius R. Agnew, Surgeon General of the State of New York during the Civil War. The Gilmans built summer “cottages” near their New York City friends and became year-round Palisades residents.
According to the church's session records, "In June 1863, a few families, summer residents of Palisades, desiring to have Presbyterian Preaching in the neighborhood, invited a licentiate of the Presbytery of N.Y. to preach & labor among them for six months from June 1st. The success of this mission…so far surpassed their expectations, that…in October of the same year, they presented a memorial signed by fifteen petitioners, to be made into a church organization.”
These faithful Presbyterians initially met at the Methodist Episcopal Church (known now as Yonderhill, on Route 9W) until the new church building on Washington Spring Road was constructed. Charles Park donated the land and Winthrop Gilman Jr. drew up plans for the Carpenter Gothic Palisades Presbyterian Chapel, which still stands on Washington Spring Road. On New Year's Eve in 1863, Mr. Park and Mr. Gilman rang the church bell for the very first time and the first service was held in the new building the following Sunday, Jan 3, 1864.
Fast forward to the middle of the 20th century: in 1956 the Presbyterian Church USA ordained Margaret Towner, its first woman minister, although official ordination of female clergy was not approved until two years later. Women ministers were not fully accepted across the denomination, but in 1974 the General Assembly ruled that ordination requires acceptance of the ordination of women. Yet, “of the church’s 13,000 ministers, [only] 189 are women. An additional 169 women are candidates for ordination.” (New York Times May 19, 1975)
Within months, the Palisades Church called its first female minister, the Rev. H. Fay Hollingshead Ellison; a continuation of its progressive streak as exemplified by the Gilman family. She served for six years and was the first woman in the denomination to serve as a solo minister. Her legacy continues to be remembered in our community. Former church member Sarah Green Page says, “Fay had a profound influence on me, my faith and ultimately who I became as a woman.” Current member Maureen Mooney-Pelligrini recalls, “Fay married my husband and me in 1975. She was brilliant, funny and so, so warm.”
The Rev. Heather Finck, whose family lived next to the church, wrote that Fay “was a dear friend of my Mom's. I felt called to ministry from a young age. ... I am still the only woman minister I know who grew up with all women clergy, first Fay and then Laurie Ferguson.” Following Rev. Ellison, Rev. Laurie Ferguson served for 15 years, welcoming all to the church: gay men during the Aids epidemic to the annual GMHC picnic, community children for an after-school Wednesday Club, Midnight Run to aid the homeless in New York City and more.
The small congregation’s fame for its broad-minded reputation is nowhere more well-known than in its support of LGBTQ individuals, both within the denomination and within society at large. The Presbyterian Church USA struggled mightily with the ordination of gay and lesbian elders and ministers. The denomination’s official position was that homosexuality was inconsistent with biblical teachings, and those who practiced same-gender love were barred from ordination.
The Palisades Church, identifying as a “More Light” congregation, stood in defiance of this rule and ordained three gay members: Jack Hoffmeister, Jim Gardner, and Mercy Garland. During the 1990s the Palisades Church was in the forefront of advocating for full ordination among gay and lesbian members, a constitutional victory not won until 2011, after forty years of debate.
The Church's membership has been dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in Palisades since its founding during the Civil War. They have embraced the abolition movement, women’s empowerment, LGBTQ inclusion, opposition to the war in Vietnam, engagement in the arts (now in its 25th year, the Children’s Shakespeare Theatre performs regularly at the church), the impact of the ecological crisis on the Hudson Valley and excesses of the technological revolution. All are issues that have attracted progressive church leaders to its pulpit including the Revs. Laurie Ferguson, Ray Bagnuolo and the current pastor, Reverend Erin Moore.
So, if you visit the Palisades Cemetery and pass the headstones of Winthrop Gilman and Fay Hollingshead Ellison, pause to consider how their contributions had a lasting impact upon the quality of life in Palisades even until this day.