The Rev. Thomas Smith’s 1874 sermon on the windows of St. James’, together with notes on the families to whom they are dedicated, is now transcribed and available at the link above.

Augustus Lawrence Converse was born 1798 in Norwich, Connecticut, son of John and Elizabeth (Backus) Converse. He graduated from Union College in 1819, was ordained in 1823, and the next year helped to organize both St. John’s in Marcellus and St. James’ in Skaneateles. He married Mary Ann Kellogg, the daughter of Daniel Kellogg, one of the village’s leading, and wealthiest, citizens. In 1827, the Rev. Converse was called south and installed as rector at the Clermont Episcopal Church (also known as the Church at Claremont) in Stateburg, South Carolina. It was a small congregation, with 25 white members, and 41 negroes (almost certainly slaves who worshiped from the back of the church).

Although he had married into money, Converse was not happy with his financial lot in life. In 1837, he wrote, “It is a very common notion, that a subscription for a salary of a clergyman is one of those debts, (if debt it is allowed to be) the payment of which may be indefinitely postponed.” He found himself borrowing to pay his debts, and paying interest on the loans, while waiting for his salary to appear.

The Rev. and Mrs. Converse returned to Skaneateles for visits, most probably in the summer months. William Beauchamp recalled that Converse had a wooden leg, needed one hand to hold his cane, and so could give communion with the chalice only. The couple’s last visit here was in 1847; Mary Ann Kellogg Converse died in Stateburg in 1848.

Marion Singleton DeVeaux

The following year, the Rev. Converse married a widow from his parish, Marion Singleton DeVeaux. She was 18 years his junior, and her family warned her that this was not a good match. But the Rev. Converse and his wife Mary Ann had been a great comfort to Mrs. DeVeaux during her husband’s final illness in 1843, and she went ahead with the marriage. The Rev. Converse and his new bride would live at her plantation, The Ruins, on a hill near the church where Converse presided. The Ruins, named for its condition when the Singleton family first took possession, had been restored and was now said to be as lovely as a French chateau.

From her father, a cotton planter, Marion had inherited land holdings which by law remained hers when she married, and were to be passed down to her children. Her first husband had agreed to this arrangement. Initially, the Rev. Converse also acquiesced. A prenuptial agreement, signed by both parties, put Marion’s property into the hands of trustees to be held for her; the land would return to her upon the death of Augustus Converse, or to her children should she die before him. But soon after the marriage, at her husband’s insistence, Mrs. Converse signed a deed giving her husband a share of the property, which he would have for life if he survived her.

In 1850, the Rev. Converse laid the cornerstone for a new church to be known as the Church of the Holy Cross. The church was consecrated in 1852. But as Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp noted in her Recollections of the Parish of St. James, Skaneateles, the Rev. Converse had “practically changed the duties of his sacred calling for the care of his plantation.” In April 1853, a church committee reported: “Resolved, that Mr. Converse’s resignation be accepted.”

At this point, the Rev. Converse’s transformation accelerated. Freed from his church duties and having obtained the upper hand at home, he became more and more tyrannical. To escape, Marion went on long visits to relatives in New York, Philadelphia and Virginia as well as South Carolina. The general feeling among Marion’s family was that Converse was a sanctimonious, short-tempered scoundrel. One aunt summed it up neatly, referring to Converse as “that grasping bad evil Man.” But Marion eventually had to return to her home and Converse was in it.

In January of 1854, infuriated because Marion would not submit to his wishes, he forced her into his room, locked the door behind them, and began loading his gun. Marion ran out onto a terrace and jumped ten feet to the ground below, where slaves, who had been drawn by screams and shouting, hurried her to their quarters.

Soon after, Converse punished the slaves for sheltering his wife and then gave his wife a “prolonged beating.” The accounts do not say if he used his fists or his cane, but the result was that Marion, bruised and bleeding, again fled from her home, this time with the help of one of her daughters, and took refuge in a cotton-house. The Rev. Converse, pursuing the two women there, called for a hammer and nails to seal them inside. Hearing this, the mother and daughter ran out into the cotton fields and hid. The weather was cold; it was pouring rain, and apparently the Rev. Converse, with his wooden leg, was unable or unwilling to give pursuit.

Again, it would seem, one or more of the slaves interceded. A neighbor was summoned, found the women in the field, and led them to safety across a river to another plantation.

At a safe distance from his rage, Marion began legal action to separate from her husband, to resume her first husband’s name and regain her land. In court, the Rev. Converse testified that he could not reconcile himself to a situation in which “all his rights as a husband were subordinate to her claim.” He said she undermined his authority with the slaves. He accused her family of “unwarrantable interference in his domestic concerns.”

The court – supporting the rights of a man, husband and slave holder – ruled against Marion; the Rev. Converse retained control of The Ruins and his wife’s property.

Marion appealed to a higher court and lost again, but this time at least the court did order the Rev. Converse to give his wife half the income from her land. And the judge, in an aside, referred to Converse’s behavior as “revolting.”

In 1855,  a much higher court gave its opinion: The Episcopal Church defrocked Converse for the “Unprovoked and Cruel beating” of his wife.

Finally, in 1857, a legal settlement was reached. Augustus Converse took $24,250 – a huge sum raised by Marion’s family and friends – in return for vacating her home and renouncing all claims to her estate. Marion and her youngest daughter returned to The Ruins to live; Marion dropped the name of Converse, and lived the rest of her life as though A.L. Converse had never existed. Her oldest daughter and her son-in-law lived at The Ruins for part of the year to help her manage the estate. In Marion’s will, she specified that her property was to go to her daughters for their “sole and separate use” during their lifetimes. She would not allow her daughters to suffer as she had.

In 1860, after three years of counting his money and living as a social pariah,  Augustus L. Converse died. He was buried in the churchyard of the Church of the Holy Cross.

“This is taken from a pencil sketch, made by Miss Latrobe in 1846, & represents it much as originally built. It was changed & enlarged the following year. Built in 1827-8. A school was kept for many years in the basement. For a long time, when necessary, C.J. Burnett read the service, & John Snook, Sr., the sermon, though sometimes others took their places.”

“This is from a pencil sketch by me in 1850. The first Church was shorter, & the tower presented quite a different appearance, as it bristled with pinnacles, & all was painted white. The difference will be best understood by comparison with a sketch of Miss Latrobe’s. While Rev. Charles Seymour was rector, the Church was enlarged, the tower altered, the building painted brown, & sanded, & the windows were whitened with paint.”

– Two sketches and their descriptions from The Rev. William Martin Beauchamp’s Souvenirs of Some Early Days in Skaneateles, N.Y. (1882), copied and published by the Skaneateles Library Association in 1983.