Old Cass Street Church |
First Unitarian Church of Omaha
History Overview
When the recently recovered 1898 First Unitarian Church quilt was created, the country was in a period of financial stress. The financial troubles began in the 1870s with the scandals of the Grant administration and continued with The Wall Street Panic of 1893, leading to a decade of depression that some historians claim was as bad as The Great Depression of the 1930s. Omaha was not exempt from the economic troubles.
This was also evident in the financial struggles of the early years of the Unitarian Church in Omaha. The first minister, Reverend Henry Bond, was able to construct a small chapel at 17th and Cass Streets in 1871. Aided by a grant from the American Unitarian Association, the church was able to avoid foreclosure. Former church archivist Marie Helms noted that later "A large addition was joined to the chapel." In 1891 this completed edifice was formally dedicated in a service conducted by Reverend Newton Mann, who had assumed the Omaha pulpit in 1889.
Even during the halcyon days of the Reverend Mann, there were still financial difficulties. In 1898 the church was unable to pay the Reverend Mann’s salary, $1,400 in arrears. In a very interesting letter to the congregation dated December 10, 1898, Reverend Mann magnanimously suggested that a series of installment payments for the upcoming year combined with the proceeds of current fund raising projects would be sufficient and agreeable to him in order to ease the financial burden on the church.
One could speculate that the newly recovered quilt was one of the projects that ultimately helped pay off the delinquencies in the Reverend Mann’s salary. |
