
Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp was one of St. James’ more fascinating parishioners. Born in England in 1825, the daughter of William Millet Beauchamp (1799-1867) and Mary (Jay) Beauchamp, she came to America with her family in 1829, and to Skaneateles in 1832. Her father was a printer and a publisher, and as a young girl she had the run of his thousand-volume lending library.
With her younger brother, William Martin Beauchamp (1830-1925), she developed a lifelong interest in the Onondaga tribe (whose members she first saw in her father’s store), botany, religion and literature.
She wrote rhyming verse for her friends, and wrote down favorite poems in her scrapbook in a very clear and precise hand. And friends added their favorite verses to her scrapbook, also in a very clear and precise hand, such as was taught in the nineteenth century. Her scrapbook was also a place for pictures, etchings that had come her way, showing her interest in architecture, botany, Indian maidens and women of fashion.
She became a regular contributor to children’s magazines; at the age of 14, she wrote a serial that ran for six months. Still in her teens, she placed an illustrated tale in Peterson’s Magazine. In her twenties, living at home, she was challenged by ill health, and her writing shifted to religious verse, published often under the pen name “Filia Ecclesiae.”
At the age of 28, accompanied by a younger brother, she returned to England, where she stayed for nearly two years. An uncle, a vicar in Wells, asked her to write a guidebook for Wells Cathedral; it was published in 1856, after she had returned to Skaneateles.
Having worshipped in England for two years, she found herself holding up the American version of the Anglican church for comparison. She wrote a series of papers entitled The Emigrant’s Quest, or Is It Our Own Church? which were collected and published “in a small, neatly bound volume of only ninety-two pages, which one could put into his vest pocket.” Edward Isidore Sears, in The National Quarterly Review, commented:
“This is an unpretending tiny volume; but the author, of whom we have no personal knowledge, could have rendered a much larger work interesting and attractive. The story purports to be that of an English emigrant belonging to the Anglican Church, whom the injustice of an avaricious landlord had forced to abandon the home of his ancestors and emigrate to this country. The unfeeling conduct of the landlord; the grief of the family at having been dispossessed merely because the lease happened to expire; their parting with their friends, &c., are each portrayed by Mr. Beauchamp with considerable pathos.
“Having arrived in this country, the emigrant, his wife, and young daughter attend different Episcopal churches in New York; and they naturally compare what they see and hear to what they had been used to in attending church at home. Some of the criticisms thus made are quite piquant; but it must be admitted that in general they are true.”
Mary Elizabeth’s mother died in 1859, and her father in 1867, loosening her ties to Skaneateles. In 1868, she moved to Buffalo and became a teacher in the orphan ward of the Church Charity Foundation, where she had 55 students; she taught there for 12 years, eventually becoming the principal.
In 1880, she went to Europe for a year with a friend from church work, and then returned to Skaneateles. She joined the Protestant Episcopal Church to the Onondaga Indians as a teacher, and bought a home in the village, where she conducted a school for the children of summer residents, organized a literary society for young ladies, and took adult pupils in French and drawing. And she wrote for publications such as The Gospel Messenger and The Churchman.
In March, 1890, she suffered a stroke, and moved in with her married sister, Maria Humphryes. But she was by no means finished with writing. In 1891, three of the religious poems she had written as a young woman were collected and published in Lyrics of the Living Church. In 1896, she prepared and delivered a speech, “Early Quakers of Skaneateles,” for the Onondaga Historical Society. And at some point along the way, she wrote “Recollections of St. James’ Church,” a history that has since gone missing.
In 1903, at the age of 79, she died at the home of her niece, Miss Margaret Humphryes. Her funeral was held on a Friday afternoon at St. James’, and she was buried in Lake View Cemetery. Her obituary noted:
“Of a devout temperament, much of her writings had a religious tone, and nothing but weakness or ill health ever kept her from church. In later days she found much pleasure in the Leisure Hour Club, but no less in the charms of nature, which an observant eye fitted her fully to enjoy.”

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My thanks to the Skaneateles Historical Society, where Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp’s scrapbook resides today. And my thanks to Google Books for her rediscovered verse below.
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TWO BIRTHDAYS
A fair-haired little maiden
Looks up with beaming eyes;
She tells me ‘t is her birthday,
With a kind of mild surprise;
So odd it seems to her small brain,
She cannot well divine
Why she was eight but yesterday,
And now, to-day, is nine.
Her mind is full of projects
About her sports and toys;
No fear of coming evil
Her present good alloys;
She only wants the tender care
Her parents freely give,
And in the shelter of their love,
Without a care can live.
A sad-eyed, gray-haired woman
Sits in her room alone:
It is her birthday morning,
And memory makes a moan,
That three score years have passed away,
And taken in their train
All hopes and joys, and left to her
But weariness and pain.
Ah! lonely one, bethink thee
Of that far birthday morn,
When life seemed full of brightness,
Thy path without a thorn.
If thou again could’st freely trust
Thy Father to provide,
Still might’st thou like little child,
Without a care abide.
IN MEMORIUM
HANNAH GARDNER PORTER
Oct. 31, 1881
Tis Hallowe’en and the trees are gay
With the gorgeous beauty of decay;
And the air is full of misty light
That soothes and charms the languid sight.
Beneath our feet and above our heads
The golden drapery waves and spreads
And full and ripe, like the Autumn day
Is the life that is passing from earth away.
With grace and beauty and culture blessed
The richest gift of each state possessed
As Christian, as wife, as mother, as friend
How brilliant the tints and how soft they blend!
Blest are the dead who die in the Lord,
They rest in peace, saith the mighty Word;
But even there, in their places of rest
Their works do follow the peaceful blest;
And the good she has been and the good she has done
Shall add to the bliss of the home she has won.
MY PORTION FOREVER
I CANNOT live without Thee,
O Jesus, Friend Divine;
I long to feel Thy Presence
Within this heart of mine.
Thou nearest and Thou dearest Friend,
Without Thee earth were gloom,
And life were but the dreary way
To an unlighted tomb.
I cannot live without Thee;
No earthly joy or love
Can fill the heart that yearneth
For Thee, all things above.
In Thee alone my heart exults,
My Love, my Joy, my All;
While Thou art mine no bliss can blind,
No terrors can appall.
I cannot live without Thee,
O Shepherd of my soul,
To guide me and to guard me
And all my ways control;
Poor, homeless wanderer I should be
Without the unseen Guide
By whom my path in life is marked,
My every want supplied.
I cannot live without Thee;
Thou art my breath of life,
My strength in every hardship,
My aid in every strife.
Uncheered by Thee, life’s loneliness
Would be too hard to bear;
And heaven would be no heaven to me
If Thou should’st not be there.
SURSUM CORDA!
O SOUL that hast a right to higher life,
Why be content with this poor mundane sphere?
Forgetful of thy lofty heritage,
Why should thy fears and wishes centre here?
Rise up, O heart, above this dark, cold sod,
Rise into warmer air and purer light,
And see the petty joys and cares of earth
Dwindle and vanish from thy soaring sight!
In thy brief absence from our Father’s courts,
Wilt thou forget thy lineage divine?
And more esteem the exile’s mean array
Than all the treasures that are truly thine?
Why should we love, and strive to make like home,
This one-night lodging in a basement cell?
When the whole palace overhead is ours,
And in its stately chambers we shall dwell.
Lift up your hearts! Too long have we bestowed
On this poor earth our being’s noblest powers.
Lift up your hearts! lift them to His abode,
His who alone can fill these hearts of ours!