Dr. Charles Lord, Church Founder and Huguenot Advocate

With thanks to Jon Coss

Charles Eliphalet Lord was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1817, to John Perkins Lord and Sophia Ladd Lord. Their ancestors were English – not Huguenot. His father was a lawyer and state legislator. John Lord claimed he owed “three-quarters of his wealth” to his wife’s good business sense and managerial skills. Charles’ brother Nathan was a successful merchant in the northeastern U.S. and then in Australia. (Unfortunately, no portrait of C.E. Lord exists.)

Charles Lord graduated from Dartmouth College and taught for several years. He studied for the ministry at three seminaries (Union, Yale, and Auburn) and was ordained in Jonesville, Mich. in 1844. He was granted a Doctorate of Divinity at East Tennessee Wesleyan University in 1870 (probably an honorary degree). And he served 15 brief pastorates scattered throughout the United States. It seems he could not stay in one place for very long.

Dr. Lord wrote a few abolitionist tracts and a history of the Congregational Church of Chester, Vermont. After many years of study and travel, he married Eunice Elizabeth Pettingell Pike (English surnames) in Newburyport, Mass. in 1857, when he was 39. She was born in Newbury-port in 1814, his elder by three years. In 1869 he published Evidences of Natural and Revealed Theology, which he dedicated to Eunice, “My Best Counselor and Friend.” It must have taken a long time to write. It runs 580 pages, including a 20-page bibliography.

: Title page

: C.W. Baird

The title sounds strange today. Natural theology looks for the proof of God in nature. Revealed theology looks for evidences of God as revealed in the scriptures. Dr. Lord named and quoted many famous naturalists and theologians, but not Charles Darwin. Criticism of fundamental beliefs was, to him, a “German abyss of speculative nonsense.” What Dr. Lord wrote is really a one-volume reference book of conservative theology.

Somewhere along the way, Dr. Lord met Charles Washington Baird, pastor of the Rye Presby-terian Church and a Huguenot descendant. C.W.’s father, Robert Baird, wrote a book, Religion in America, which included a chapter about the Huguenots. Robert Baird’s ancestors came from Northern Ireland, but those of his wife, Fermine Ophelia Amaryllis Du Buisson, were French Huguenots. Charles W. Baird expanded his father’s chapter into his own book, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America. And his younger brother, Henry Martyn Baird, wrote a six-volume history tracing the rise, persecution, and emigration of the Huguenots.

: Dr. Henry M. Baird

: Engraving of Huguenots arriving at Dover, England in 1685.

The faithful, frugal, and industrious Huguenots fascinated Charles Lord. They inspired him to establish a church in their honor. In the 1870s, he began raising funds for a church in Pelham Manor by presenting 28 lectures, based on writings of the Bairds, to audiences in the New York area. He outlined the lectures under three topics: (1) Huguenots of the Old World, (2) Hugue-nots of the New World, and (3) Local History of the Huguenots of Westchester County, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Influential clergymen endorsed his lectures in religious newspapers.

The Little Red Church, from a lantern slide

The Huguenot Memorial Church held its inaugural service in July 1876 to coincide with the American centennial. Dr. Lord delivered a sermon (or lecture) on “The Religious History of the Huguenots in America, and Reasons for the Erection of Huguenot Memorial Church.” That October, 18 Pelham residents (including Mrs. Eunice Lord) petitioned the Westchester Presby-tery to officially organize the church. At least one of the 18 members, Mrs. Zipporah LeConte Bertine, had Huguenot ancestors. The Presbytery appointed a Committee of Six, led by Rev. Charles W. Baird, to guide Dr. Lord and the congregation through the steps of organization.

There is a related story to Dr. Lord and the Huguenot Church. Robert Bartow owned property in Pelham Bay Park that included a tree known as the Treaty Oak. In 1664 six Native American leaders signed a treaty under it, granting 9,600 acres of land to Thomas Pell. Over the years, violent storms damaged the tree. In 1877 Mr. Bartow gifted the remains to Dr. Lord for fund raising. The wood was cut into small pieces for souvenirs and used to raise $700 – worth over $20,000 today. A Methodist preacher in New Rochelle wrote letters to newspapers attacking the merchandising campaign, but maybe Bartow and Lord were just ahead of their time.

: The Treaty Oak at Bartow-Pell Mansion, painted by John M. Shinn, HMC charter member.

: A piece of the Treaty Oak donated to The Manor Club. Photograph by Blake Bell.

In 1877, Dr. Lord made a list of 300 Huguenot descendants living in America. He invited them to form an association, but the plan lacked enough support. John Jay II, a diplomat and grandson of the first Chief Justice, eventually adopted Lord’s idea. Jay organized a group of Huguenot descendants living in New York City to form the Huguenot Society of America in 1883.

The British descendants of Huguenots also adopted the idea and organized the Huguenot Society of London in 1885. That year was the bicentennial of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the event that caused the Huguenots to flee France to escape religious persecution. Incidentally, the London Society made the Baird brothers honorary fellows.