Future saints of every faith are diligent at work these days in congregations or regional offices and programs. The marks they have already left and will leave will one day be celebrated, and they will become icons deserving places in pantheons for the great forbears of faith.
It is only a matter of time before their impact is truly known and then properly recognized. Certainly, we can spot many of them today because of their force, leadership and works.
That was not readily apparent in 1882 when an Easterner came to Tombstone then left town not long thereafter.
Bishop Kirk S. Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona recently took steps toward elevating to national church prominence the name of Territorial Days Episcopal lay minister and later priest Endicott Peabody. The state was a veritable stopping off point for Peabody, a native of Massachusetts, who would spend hardly more than six months in 1882 in Tombstone. But in that time he organized a congregation of almost 200 people and constructed St. Pauls Church, said to be the oldest Protestant church in the state.
Peabody, who came from an aristocratic New England family, gained his fame from going back home to Massachusetts and founding the Groton School for Boys (now just Groton School) in Groton, Mass. He served as headmaster for 56 years, overseeing the education of the scions of many influential American families, Smith reported in a recent E-Pistle commentary on the dioceses web site (azdiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/207) His most famous student was President Franklin Roosevelt.
On Nov. 17 at Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, Peabody preached about Peabody. It was tied into the 150th anniversary of Peabodys birth. A special service was held at the
Tombstone church as well. The bishop noted he had a spiritual kinship to Peabody after reading that mans correspondence125 years ago with Julius Atwood, who was the first Episcopal bishop of Arizona.
Peabodys quick success with getting the Tombstone church up and going is attributed to his willingness to make personal calls on all the town families. In that exercise, Smith said, Peabody became friends with some of the towns most notorious characters including Wyatt Earp, whose family gave the altar rail of the new church. It was said
Peabody was not afraid to pass the hat for the new church building at the towns many saloons.
The preacher is also credited with starting Tombstones first baseball team. Concluded Smith, He is venerated as one of the Diocese of Arizonas most important missionaries, as well as the greatest of Episcopal headmasters. Smiths efforts were explained as the first step to eventually having that persons name added to the liturgical calendar of the National Church, printed in the Book of Common Prayer.
