It is not hard to make for oneself a colourful picture of a typical
Sunday congregation in these dead and gone days. Trinity was the
Spiritual Headquarters, one understands; St. Paul's came later, and
was immensely fashionable. Though it was rather far out from Greenwich
the Greenwich denizens patronised it at the expense of time and
trouble. A writer, whose name I cannot fix at the moment, has
described the Sabbath attendance:--ladies in powder and patches
alighting from their chaises; servants, black of skin and radiant of
garment; officers in scarlet and white uniforms (Colonel "Ol" de
Lancey lost his patrimony a bit later because he clung to his!)--a
soft, fluttering, mincing crowd--most representative of the Colonies,
and loathed by the stiff-necked Dutch.
Trinity got its foothold in 1697, and the rest of the English
churches had holdings under the Trinity shadow. St. Paul's (where Sir.
Peter Warren paid handsomely for a pew, and which is today perhaps the
oldest ecclesiastic edifice in the city, and certainly the oldest of
the Trinity structures) was built in 1764, on the street called Vesey
because of the Rev.
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