Grace Cathedral

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“See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare” (Isa. 42).

Today we are celebrating the 175^th anniversary of Grace Cathedral. We are 175 years young! What we have become would have seemed impossible back then. In 1844 only five years before our founders had their first service in Grace Chapel, this town was called Yerba Buena. There were only a dozen houses here (the 1842 census listed only 21 residents).[1] Whaling ships actually preferred to anchor on the Marin side of the Golden Gate where there was an abundance of water and wood, and where the ranchos could provide food.[2]

Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) who had visited ten years earlier wrote, “The Californians are an idle, thriftless people and cannot make anything for themselves.” The writer Irving Stone describes San Francisco in those days, “Somehow the town had not caught on… The Mission Dolores four to five miles out from the cove, was falling into ruins, the presidio overlooking the strait, built by the Spanish in 1776 had been pilfered almost down to its foundations by people wanting free adobe bricks and lumber for their buildings… [N]obody wanted to settle in Yerba Buena… The tiny mud and adobe hamlet was the ugly duckling of the Far West.”

By June 1847 the city’s name had been changed by Mayor Washington Alon Bartlett to San Francisco and the population had risen to 375. Those first San Franciscans were international. They came from around the world and 80% of them were under the age of 40.

Then on January 24, 1848 James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma. By December 1849, when we had the first service in our new church, 40,000 prospectors had arrived. About 40% of them came by sea, some making the 17,000 mile journey around Cape Horn. They wore red flannel shirts, broad felt hats, loose coats with revolvers and knives at their belts.

By the end of 1850, our first year, San Francisco had a population of 28,000 men and only 2,000 women. In May of that year a fire that started in a saloon burned for seven hours. It destroyed three hundred houses including city hall and our major business district. It did $4 million dollars of damage (this was equivalent to half the value of the gold dug out of the ground in 1849). On June 12 another fire caused $3 million dollars of damage. In September 150 houses burned. In October $250,000 of property burned, then in December, $1 million dollars in property was similarly destroyed.[3]

There has never been another city like this. Constantly struck down by adversity and building itself up again. Welcoming newcomers and embracing change are part of our DNA.

Late in 1848 six influential San Franciscans asked the Episcopal Church’s General Board of Missions to send a priest here. They chose the Rev. Dr. John Ver Mehr whose departure was delayed by his smallpox infection. He left the East Coast in February 1849. A different group of San Franciscans felt impatient about the delay. They talked to their friends in New York about approaching the second place candidate Rev. Flavel Mines. Mines arrived here on July 4, 1849 and Ver Mehr arrived exactly two months later.[4] It was an accident that two different priests were invited. These are the founders of Trinity Church (now on Gough Street) and Grace Cathedral.

In his memoir Checkered Life: Life in the Old and New Worlds John Ver Mehr describes a horrifying incident that happened not long after he arrived. Five sailors were rowing their midshipman back to their ship. Tempted by freedom and the gold fields, they threw the officer overboard, struck him in the head with their oars, left him for dead and tried to escape.

The men were captured and sentenced to hang for murder. At this point the commodore called Ver Mehr to minister to them. In the night two of the brothers confessed and asked that the other men be set free. Ver Mehr believed that his spiritual counseling to the brothers led to their generous confession. He also wondered if the church services he presided at may have caused the commodore to arrive at this uncharacteristically merciful decision to exonerate the others.

We are so blessed to have Dr. Ver Mehr’s emotional account of the first service in the first chapel. It was just a few blocks down Powell from here. It was 20 feet by 60 feet “clapboarded, with a shingled roof and seven windows.” The people only had rough planks to sit on. A hundred prayerbooks had been given to us by the Philadelphia Bible Association. Ver Mehr remembers putting the bookmarks in them the night before so that people would be able to follow the service. As he did this it first occurred to him to name this “Grace Chapel.” For Christians grace means the free gift, that we do not deserve, but that we nonetheless receive from God. This free gift is our life and all the relationships that support it.

Here is what Ver Mehr writes about the first service in the  new church. “On Sunday morning… from my very narrow vestry-room I heard… preparations. A bell, the gift of Mr. Frank Ward, had been tolling. I peeped through the canvass partition. Sturdy miners came in and took their seats on the rough planks, taking up the prayer-books, and evidently in earnest. Others came. A few ladies, very few. At last the tolling bell ceased, the organ struck, and I walked to the altar. That morning service I shall not forget! The responses were loud and clear. My first sermon listened to with attention. The offertory was read. The plates went round. There was not one silver piece on them! I had nothing but gold to offer at the altar.”[5]

In those pages Ver Mehr singles out two ministries that gave him great joy. He names the five singers in the choir formed for the first day. And he writes about the school he founded three weeks later. He writes proudly, “I opened a parish school, where all children without distinction of creed, were admitted free… and during five hours received instruction… In a few weeks there were over seventy scholars” (357).

All this happened 175 years ago. Today we are still deeply proud of our choirs (we have a 70 person choir tonight with 52 youth singers) and our schools. We are grateful that each generation through God’s grace has made its contribution to our life together. In the face of chaos, danger and violence, our forebears were inspired by the love and presence of Christ. They saved lives such as those of the mutineers and souls like that of the Commodore.

Grace Cathedral grew up with this city. We share similar values. We are open to people from different backgrounds and faiths. We care that everyone has a voice. We believe in our traditions and in listening to the spirit as we try new things. We exist for everyone in the city and not just for those who worship here on Sunday. In the face of adversity we rebuild.

John Ver Mehr would have loved to see us here. Thank you for celebrating God’s goodness together tonight and for your work in building what Grace Cathedral will be 175 years from now in the year 2200.

[1] An 1842 census listed 21 residents born in the US or Europe and one Filipino merchant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#:~:text=On%20January%2030%2C%201847%2C%20Mayor,in%20use%20on%20international%20maps.

[2] Irving Stone, Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West 1840 to 1900 (NY: Doubleday, 1956) 63.

[3] Ibid., 178, 182.

[4] https://trinity-stpeters.org/news-from-the-archives/

[5] John L. Ver Mehr, Checkered Life: In the Old and New World (San Francisco, A. L. Bancroft, 1877) 356.2005. https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

[v] Cited in a letter from Rev’d Dr. Vincent Pizzuto sent on Friday 10 January 2025.

[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/11/us/los-angeles-fires-california