Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

The culmination of their wedding journey was the train ride to Moscow and St. Petersburg. “We visited palaces and rode in droskies and never tired of the wonderful cathedrals. Many a time we stood through the long Greek ritual of the Russian service and heard the marvelous music, hundreds of male voices in perfect tone and harmony without a single instrument to lead them, or join with them.”¹⁴⁸

They planned to return from St. Petersburg by way of Germany, but a sorry surprise awaited them at the bank when they went to cash an unused letter of credit. The bank official examined it, then shook his head. “It is perfectly good, but at the moment we are in controversy with the bank that issued it, and are cashing no more of their letters of credit until we are favored with the apology which is due us.” This was a calamity of the first order, because they had just ten dollars to get them all the way back to America. The American ambassador to Russia was no help, and so they prayed.

With no idea how they were going to pay, they stuffed bread and bologna into their luggage and boarded a steamer for Kronstadt. William tried to explain to the German captain that they had an unused letter of credit, but he said he had no time to examine the papers. With a kindly expression on his face, the captain stroked Lucy’s chin, telling her to cheer up, and ordered the steward to put them in a fine stateroom.

They sat down, preparing to bite into the bologna, when the steward knocked at the door and gestured for Lucy to go with him. She followed the steward, with William a few paces behind, and was ushered into the dining salon, right up to the captain’s table. “He rose and with great ceremony seated me in the place of honor at his right, amiably disposing of my husband farther down the table on the opposite side.” This was the way they took each meal of the voyage, Lucy enjoying the attention of the charming captain, and William sulking in disgrace at the far end of the table.

When they neared Lubeck, the captain invited Lucy onto the bridge to enjoy the view. She insisted on dragging William with her, so he was forced to be a witness when the captain presented Lucy with his portrait, accompanied by great sentimentality. William offered to give the captain what money they had left, in partial payment of their debts, but he refused to take anything. This was well, because the remaining dollars got them to Hamburg, where their tickets were valid for the steamer to America.

Home
After such adventures, William and Lucy seemed far more mature to family and friends, and their Erie parishioners greeted them with awe. Brother Harry had continued to prosper, and with money came “plans both visionary and grand.” Worth the enormous sum of about $25,000 at that point, he sold out his interest in the stove company and went west. He invested unwisely, lost everything, and returned to Erie. He and Lou always believed that something would turn up. “They have at times been in some straits,” Lucy noted, “and at times the children have gone about dirty and ragged, when Lou was playing piano or sitting waiting for good luck.”¹⁴⁹ For Lucy and William, too, it was a time for high hopes and great risks.

Pregnant with her first child, Lucy visited Cleveland, to seek her mother’s medical advice and to share Cleora’s great success as a woman doctor and a doctor of women. The Western Homeopathic College, where Cleora had studied, began excluding females,¹⁵⁰ so Cleora organized other feminists to establish the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, of which she was first president.¹⁵¹

Dr. Mrs. Seaman challenged both her women and the male society that had restricted them: “In the heart of every true woman is implanted a desire to know the causes of suffering and the means of its speedy relief — this desire, this need, we now feel can be met through the instrumentalities of our college. Even when the door of our brothers’ college was a little ajar, so that a few women might step in and avail themselves of the privileges given to gentlemen, this great need still remained. A few only were willing to brave the criticism and submit to the peculiar embarrassments which meet one in studying medical science with the opposite sex. Having been deprived of this, our only means, in this city, of acquiring medical knowledge, we now, in this new institution, will strive to give to many women the advantages they desire.”¹⁵²

The first annual announcement of the college described her teaching. “Mrs. C. A. Seaman, who has been widely known these many years as being most successful in the treatment of chronic diseases peculiar to her sex, will, in connection with the Chair of Theory and Practice, deliver a course of lectures on the Therapeutical Uses of Electricity, which will, together with the clinical advantages to be derived from her extensive practice and complete electrical apparatus for the employment of baths, etc., afford unparalleled facilities for the study of this most important auxiliary in the treatment of chronic diseases generally, and women especially.”¹⁵³

Conventional physicians outnumbered homeopaths in Cleveland a hundred and eleven to twenty-four.¹⁵⁴ But simply because homeopathy was a minority viewpoint does not prove that the instruction given in Mrs. Dr. Seaman’s college was valueless. At its peak, the faculty consisted of ten professors plus a demonstrator of anatomy. In addition to anatomy and the subjects taught by Cleora, lectures were given in chemistry, toxicology, surgery, microscopy, physiology, pathology, medical jurisprudence and insanity.

On November 8, 1868 in Cleveland, Lucy gave birth to a baby girl, named Cleora after Lucy's mother and dead sister. It must have been a glorious Christmas, with all honor due both Cleoras. At age twenty-six, Lucy was a mother and a world traveller. Good fortune continued to smile on Seaman and Smith. In the first night of December, a burglar cut the glass of a rear window of the shoe store, but a sleeping clerk rose the alarm.¹⁵⁵

Ambition drew William away from backwater Erie, so he applied for the pastorate of the Central Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island. Impressed by his credentials, members of Central Baptist unanimously accepted the recommendation of the Pulpit Committee to hire William.¹⁵⁶ The Select Committee proposed a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars a year, with four weeks of vacation.¹⁵⁷ By the end of the month William had assumed all of his duties, presiding over a general business meeting on the twenty-fifth. He and Lucy presented letters of removal from First Baptist Church of Erie and were admitted to membership in Central Baptist. William chaired a committee to prepare his installation ceremony.¹⁵⁸

The grand ritual on March 11, 1869, was presided over by four ministers. The hymns sought divine aid for the new pastor: “Father of mercies, bow thine ear, Attentive to our earnest prayer; We plead for those who plead for thee; Successful pleaders may they be.” “The shepherd of thy people bless: Gird him with thy own holiness; In duty may his pleasure be, His glory in his zeal for thee.” After receiving the hand of fellowship and hearing the doxology, William closed the service with a benediction.

Analysis
The exchange theory of religion notes that humans trade rewards with other humans, especially when the individual cannot obtain a desired reward by his or her solitary efforts. Religion offers some of the greatest rewards in a non-verifiable context such as heaven, and we have called these promises general compensators. Adherents of a religion trust that its promises will be fulfilled if they carry out their side of the bargain, for example performing prescribed rituals. This faith arises in exchanges between individuals. From interaction with other humans the individual extrapolates the hope for exchanges with God, typically mediated through other individuals who are religious specialists such as priests.

A perennial problem in the sociology of religion has been the source of the legitimacy which successful clergy possess. A well-established religious organization can bestow some of its authority upon an individual by ordaining him or her as clergy. In modern bureaucratic denominations, professional education prepares the individual for ordination, and that education includes both book learning and practical internships. At Rochester Theological Seminary, William had successfully completed intellectually demanding courses in theology, ancient languages, and religious history. And as a "delegate" of the Christian Commission at the battlefront, he had acquired practical experience. On the basis of these accomplishments he was ordained and called to First Baptist Church in Erie.

The chief alternative to bureaucratic legitimation of religious authority is charisma, "An extraordinary power, such as the ability to perform miracles, granted to a Christian by the Holy Spirit."¹⁵⁹ As Max Weber noted, a person gains religious authority if others believe he or she has such power, but we need not make any assumptions about whether he or she actually has it.¹⁶⁰ Stark and I have criticized the traditional sociological concept of charisma, and we have also noted that it might be conceptualized as an unusual ability of religious leaders to build effective social bonds.¹⁶¹ Others have argued in a parallel fashion that charisma is the capacity to arouse and channel powerful emotions, probably on the basis of an unusual personality configuration and skill at reading the emotional needs of other people.¹⁶² Nothing in any of the ample documentation we possess indicates that William was an emotionally warm person or that he had emotionally intense religious experiences. He did, however, have a strong ambition to become a religious leader.

If religious compensators can satisfy existing obligations to exchange partners, they may also make a person attractive as a prospective exchange partner. In other words, secondary compensation is an issue prior to the formation of exchange relationships, as well as afterward. Two of the propositions in the Stark-Bainbridge theory are relevant here: "Religious specialists promulgate norms, said to come from the gods, that increase the rewards flowing to the religious specialists." "Religious specialists share in the psychic rewards offered to the gods, for example: deference, honor, and adoration."¹⁶³

To appear to be a valuable exchange partner is beneficial to any individual. A person is attractive to the extent that other people will give that person rewards without requiring the person immediately to reciprocate by giving them a reward of equal or greater value. People invest in someone they find attractive, in hopes that they will receive great rewards in the future, perhaps in the distant future or in some undefined context. Another way of looking at this is to say that an attractive person receives rewards from others but can satisfy them in the immediate exchanges by providing compensators. Thus, a religious specialist may invest in activities to increase the apparent value of the compensators he or she has to offer.

In some societies, the individual may undergo costly spiritual ordeals, perhaps to forge a publicly acknowledged exchange relationship with a supernatural being. In a society with a highly professionalized clergy, the individual may invest in extensive formal training and attempt to create masterworks of the spirit (such as ritual performances, religious art, or sacred scholarship) that demonstrate that he or she has the requisite spiritual skill, sacred knowledge, or divine talent.

Secondary compensation is another way of conceptualizing charisma. Charisma means the possession of spiritual gifts, which may be offered to potential exchange partners. I Corinthians 12:8-11 lists the gifts that different individuals may have: "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another diverse kinds of tongues; to another the interpretations of tongues; but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will." Although William lacked emotional gifts, through hard study and travel he could acquire knowledge. His familiarity with the languages of the Bible gave him a scholarly version of "interpretations of tongues." By visiting the Holy land, in a religious tradition that values pilgrimages and at a time when few Americans had the opportunity to go there, William gained a form of charisma by association with places that possessed spiritual power for Christians.

Both William's formal education and his travel to the Holy Land were ways that he increased his human capital.¹⁶⁴ The term human capital refers to the nonmaterial resources of a person that allow him or her to participate more effectively in socioeconomic exchanges. The related term social capital is sometimes used for the social relationships and group memberships that strengthen a person's position in exchanges, and cultural capital is the possession of culturally-valued knowledge and associations with cultural symbols that likewise are valuable assets. William had earned a diploma from one of the most respected schools of theology, had served with the honorable Christian Commission in the glorious war to preserve the Union, and had trod in the footsteps of Jesus in the Holy Land. Thus he had done all the right things to maximize his cultural capital as a clergyman. His reward was the pastorate of one of the nation's largest Baptist churches.

Chapter 4:

The Calm Before the Storm

After the thunder of the war, and the winds of travel through ancient lands, Providence was like a calm, summer’s afternoon in a pleasant meadow. The “large and comfortable” church building stood at the junction of Broad and High streets, costing $65,000 when it was built a dozen years before.¹⁶⁵ Constructed of graceless red brick, it nonetheless possessed a certain style, with a bold, nested arch motif enclosing the front doors and an echo of arches in the row of scallops nestled under the roof line. A heavy, square belltower stood to the left of the main structure, in lieu of a steeple. The membership was 341 baptized adults, plus swarms of children, when William and his family joined, and Central was said to be the second-largest Baptist church in New England.

About two months after the installation ceremony, Lucy and William conceived another child. Lucy’s mother came from Cleveland to visit and to help out with family work, but in early July she contracted a fever. Like conventional physicians, homeopathic doctors had little that could conquer fevers. Their approach was different, prescribing a highly diluted dose of a substance that might produce a fever, under the principle that “like cures like.” But Cleora the elder could not readily cure herself.

When illness cannot readily be cured it becomes not only a medical phenomenon, but also a religious matter. Lucy pasted in her scrapbook a little quotation: “Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken into his private chamber, and there he converses with us, face to face. The world is far off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone with God.”

For a time it seemed that Lucy’s mother was improving. But her fever proved “intermittent,” lifting and returning as if to tantalize the family with visions of cure. Then, on July 10, 1869, in the Bainbridge house at 53 Chestnut street, Cleora Augusta Seaman died, just fifty-five years of age.¹⁶⁶ Her last words hinted at a complex and not always restrained life: “Lucy, I have been a great sinner, but I have a great Savior.”¹⁶⁷ Her will gave all her medical library and bookcases, her medicines, and her instruments to the college she had founded.¹⁶⁸ There was no thought that Lucy should have them, or that anyone in her family might become a physician.

On February 17, 1870, Lucy gave birth to a son. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” Lucy must have thought, because just two months after the birth of her son, her daughter Cleora died of water on the brain.¹⁶⁹ It is not known how early Lucy realized she was doomed, but William considered his daughter a “naturally strong and healthy child.”¹⁷⁰ Lucy tended the dying girl, and the boy just born, with the help of an Irish servant named Anne Maguire.¹⁷¹ The mixture of grief and joy that marked the pregnancy and the post partum period gave added importance to the son, whom his parents considered delicate, and his life was to be filled with demands for glory and for immortality.

With mere words, humans seek to redefine death. In Cleveland, the husband of one of Dr. Cleora Seaman’s most faithful patients wrote, “Oh, rest is sweet, when setting sun Proclaims our honest labor done; When toil is o’er, when victory won, The rest is sweet.”¹⁷² Lucy’s pen expressed her grief in a short story, published some time after her daughter’s death:

“The light from the open fire was dancing over the furniture, playing hide-and-seek about the engravings and little chromo on the wall, and brightening the plain old carpet until it was as handsome as the elegant tapestry in the drawing-room across the street. Through the half open door was a glimpse of the little supper-table, with its scarlet plaided cloth and bright silver. It was a cheery picture. Bridget felt the influence of it even in the kitchen, and as she looked after the muffins hummed an Irish ditty to herself. Birdie in his cage by the window had snugly tucked the little head away for the night, and as snugly asleep in the soft cradle bed was the baby boy, with the little thumb in his mouth, the darling of the household.

“All was sunny, but the face of the mother, alone in the firelight. The sewing had dropped. With hands clasped she sat looking into the depths of the little bright fire, as though she was not willing to take its brightness and accept its warmth, but she must needs go back to the black coal and to the dull lifeless ashes and ponder them. Now and then a quiver of the lip, a little silent tear stealing down the cheek, showed how sad the heart was within: it was forgetting the warmth and brightness of the present, and the glory of heaven — so real, but memory had taken the thoughts back to a little grave made in the spring time, to the little form laid away to rest.

“It seemed cold out at Hazlewood Cemetery since the snow-drifts had come, and the winds blew so fiercely. O, if she could only take the little casket home and keep it near her. How little we realize that the casket is nothing, when the priceless jewel is gone. The poor, fragile tenement of clay is only the temporary home of the loved one, and yet we love to lay it tenderly away for the dear one’s sake. The heart of that mother had had many strong cords of affection to bind it to earth, but in the spring time the Savior visited the little home, and found it wise to sever one, and fasten it above.

“The Christian parents could in submission say, ‘It is well, since God wills it so,’ but the mother’s heart was aching still for the earthly presence. She longed for a sight of the sunny face and the sound of the prattling lips so still. Heaven seemed too far away, and a long weary way ere she should reach it. How apt the sorrowing Christian heart is to forget the daily toil for Jesus, and ‘look too eagerly beyond.’”¹⁷³

Some small comfort came from the honors paid to Lucy’s mother by the Women’s Medical College, and she lovingly preserved the newspaper clipping sent from Cleveland that described its commencement exercises, marking the passages about her mother when she pasted it into her scrapbook. The celebration was held at the college itself, at the corner of Erie and Prospect streets, and the primarily female audience rejoiced in the success of the college they had created and in the opportunity it offered them for social advancement. Gazing down on the ladies was a large portrait of Dr. Seaman, under the words, “Her works praise her.”¹⁷⁴

Challenged by the great success of Cleora’s medical college, the men’s college reversed its policy against admitting women, and the schools swiftly merged. “All subjects best taught apart will be so given, thus avoiding the objections heretofore urged against joint medical education of the sexes. No distinction will be made in regard to matriculation, course of instruction, or graduation.”¹⁷⁵ Cleora had lived just long enough to learn women had won this great battle, and John Seaman sustained her triumph by loyally remaining a trustee of the Cleveland Homeopathic College for the rest of his life.¹⁷⁶

After Cleora died, Lucy observed, John Seaman was “the loneliest man one could possibly imagine.” Her mother-in-law had been a widow since 1865, and was still struggling to raise two of her children. Partly because he thought it would please Lucy that he had someone to take care of him, John Seaman wed Mary Folwell Bainbridge. Thus, Lucy’s mother-in-law became her step-mother, and William’s father-in-law became his step-father. Mary moved to 65 Seneca Street in Cleveland, taking with her daughter Mary Eliza and son Clement who would soon leave the household and have a career as an opera singer in leading European and American companies.¹⁷⁷

Lucy and her husband named their boy William Seaman Bainbridge. An Englishman named Cuthbert Bainbridge visited Providence, maintaining that they were members of the same family, so William resolved to investigate genealogy.¹⁷⁸ Lucy knew that the American naval hero, Commodore William Bainbridge, was a member of her husband's family, but his story revealed the precariousness of a life lived for sake of glory. In 1803 he had taken the warship Philadelphia into Tripoli harbor in North Africa to attack the Barbary pirates only to run aground, fail in an attempt to scuttle his own ship, and to pay for his errors with nineteen months imprisonment. Later, in the War of 1812, the Commodore took command the frigate Constitution and hunted British ships off the coast of Brazil. In a classic naval battle, ship against ship, the Constitution defeated the Java, inspiring hope that feeble America with its miniscule fleet might yet triumph over Imperial Britain.¹⁷⁹ Lucy and William imagined their own son achieving the heights that had been reached by the Commodore, without falling to the same depths, and they thought of the naval hero as a close ancestor. The fact is that the Commodore was only the first cousin of William Folwell Bainbridge’s great-grandfather.¹⁸⁰

Expectations of glory aside, everyone doted on delicate little Willie. Since the death of Lucy’s older brother, George, her father had been cold and distant, seemingly incapable of loving any of the young people around him. But John Seaman warmed to Willie, and he found in his grandson the hopes that had died with his son.

William and Lucy vigorously entered the life of Providence and rose in local fame. Every Sunday, he offered public worship, in the morning at ten thirty and in the evening at seven or seven thirty. The Sabbath school monopolized every Sunday afternoon, and Lucy taught a Bible class of older girls who worked in the mills around Providence, sometimes as many a a hundred of them. She kept in touch with many of the girls during the week and held social evenings for them. William led a general prayer meeting every Tuesday evening and a young people’s meeting every Friday. Lucy often participated in the Female Prayer Meeting every Thursday afternoon at the home of elderly Hannah Tallman on Pine street. William was a life member of the American Baptist Missionary Union and became a director the year Willie was born. He attended annual conventions of the church and traded sermons with other Baptist preachers in New England.