TABLE OF CONTENTS

Collection Summary

Biographical Information

Scope and Content of the Collection

Arrangement of the Papers

Restrictions

Index Terms

Related Material

Administrative Information

Detailed Description of the Collection

Personal papers, 1836-1872, 1947 and 1970

Episcopal documents, 1852-1880

Legal documents, 1850-1872

Diaries, journals and notes, 1842-1867

Pastoral letters and circulars, 1853-1872

Correspondence, 1842-1880

Speeches, sermons and writings, 1848-1869

Institutions and agencies, 1836-1872

Petitions, 1853-1870

Financial documents, 1844-1876

Scrapbooks, 1855-1872

Appendix: Addendum to the Biographical Information

James Roosevelt Bayley papers

Biographical Information

James Roosevelt Bayley, son of Guy Carleton and Grace Roosevelt Bayley and nephew of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Newark's first Roman Catholic Bishop was born at Rye, New York, on August 23rd, 1814.

Descended from prominent New York physicians, and raised in a devout Episcopal household, James Roosevelt Bayley alternately planned careers in medicine and religion. Upon his 1835 graduation from Washington (now Trinity) College, however, Bayley chose the ministry and began studying under Middletown, Connecticut clergyman Dr. Samuel Farmar Jarvis in 1836. In October 1840, he was ordained and appointed rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Harlem.

Bayley soon began entertaining doubts concerning the Episcopal Church's validity, however. A trip to Europe and study in Rome increased his uncertainties, and on April 28, 1842, Bayley converted to Catholicism. He began preparing for the priesthood at Paris' St. Sulpice Seminary and, upon returning to New York, was ordained by Archbishop John Hughes on March 2, 1844.

Hughes appointed Bayley Vice President and Professor of Rhetoric at St. John's College, Fordham (the Diocesan seminary), and the newly ordained convert assumed the acting president's post in 1845. Bayley was named pastor of the New Brighton, Staten Island Church in June 1846, and six months later he became secretary to Archbishop Hughes.

When the Holy See erected the Diocese of Newark on July 29, 1853 (thus severing northern New Jersey from the New York Diocese and southern New Jersey from the Diocese of Philadelphia), Bayley was consecrated its first Bishop. He served in Newark until 1872, when he received a promotion to Baltimore's Arch-Episcopal See. Ill health forced him to seek a coadjutor (James Gibbons) in 1877, and Bayley returned to Newark, where he died on October 3 of that year.

More detailed biographical information might be obtained by consulting Sister Mary Hildegrade Yeager's Life of James Roosevelt Bayley 1814-1877 the Dictionary of American Biography entry for James Roosevelt Bayley; and Rev. Edwin Vose Sullivan's unpublished doctoral dissertation, "An Annotated Copy of the Diary of Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, First Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, 1853- 1872." The latter author also contributed a chapter on Bishop Bayley to the New Jersey Catholic Historical Records Commission's The Bishops of Newark.

See Appendix A for a genealogical sketch of the family by Monsignor William Noé Field.

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Scope and Content of the Collection

This collection focuses primarily on Bayley's tenure as Bishop of Newark from 1853 to 1872, but spans the years 1836-1877. During Bayley's episcopate, the Diocese embraced all of New Jersey, and the Bishop's papers document Catholic activities throughout the entire state. Materials are in English, Latin and French.

An Episcopal register chronicles visitations from Macopin to Cape May, blending the Bishop's commentary on parish activities with observations concerning significant state and national affairs. Available letters include correspondence with parish priests laboring throughout New Jersey, seminarians studying at St. Sulpice, prominent laymen, religious communities, and fellow American Bishops including John Hughes of New York and Francis Patrick Kenrick of Baltimore.

Other valuable items also appear throughout the papers. Personal diaries relate details of Bayley's European travels during 1842-1843, as well as his 1867 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Family correspondence, letters to the Propaganda Fide, documentation concerning the founding of Diocesan institutions and financial accounts exist for the entire period. In addition, the collections boasts Bayley's original handwritten manuscript "Sketch of the Life of the Rt. Rev. Simon William Gabriel Brute de Remur, first Bishop of Vincennes." Published in 1860, this manuscript version of one of Bayley's two scholarly works, the other being his Brief Sketch of the Early History of the Church on the Island of New York, constitutes one of the archives' most significant individual holdings.

Researchers will note that a considerable portion of the collection consists of photocopies. Original manuscripts for these items reside in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and locator numbers in the upper right hand corners of these documents refer to their place in that repository. Bayley carried the bulk of his personal papers to Baltimore upon his 1872 promotion to that Arch-Episcopal See, however all Newark-related material was borrowed and duplicated for researcher convenience. Please consult the archivist for proper method of citation.

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Arrangement of the Papers

Forms part of Archdioces of Newark record group 2, Bishops and Archbishops records

The papers are arranged into 11 series:

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Restrictions

Restrictions on Access

Collection is open to researchers at the Msgr. William Noé Field Archives & Special Collections Center. Advance appointments are required for the use of archival materials.

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Related Material

Baltimore, MD. Archdiocese of Baltimore, Associated Archives at St. Mary's Seminary & University. James Roosevelt Bayley papers.

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Index Terms

Persons:

Organizations:

Subjects:

Document Types:

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

James Roosevelt Bayley papers, The Monsignor Noé Field Archives & Special Collections Center, Walsh Library, Seton Hall University.

Acquisition Information

Archdioces of Newark.

Processing Information

Collection reformatted by M. Kenny 2007-2008.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Addendum to the Biographical Information of James Roosevelt Bayley

by Monsignor William Noé Field, March 22, 1991

A concern with ancestry and recognition of persistent characteristics, physical and dispositional, in a given family has left constant traces in every culture. In Genesis, and indeed from Genesis to Matthew, there is almost a preoccupation with descent and familial lines. In the cultures of South America and the Orient there is an insistence upon imperial descent from the sun and the conferring by that descent characteristics associated with solar descent. Even in the colloquial expressions of ordinary people "He's his father come to life" or "Your Mother won't be dead so long as you are alive" express that belief in the genetic transmission of traits and tendencies. Surely this universal practice validates a review of the ancestry of James Roosevelt Bayley.

It is easy to over-reach this theory/speculation in order to arrive at a desired conclusion. There are some, for example, who find in Elizabeth Ann Bayley as much of the Huguenot as of the Catholic, with her deep religious introspection and her unbending conviction once she felt that she had found irrefutable truth. It is just as easy to stretch beyond believability recognition of genetic traits in Bishop Bayley but at the same time, his familial background and descent do appear in a serious consideration of his lineage. When one discovers his heritage includes French and Dutch, English, and possibly Saxon in a racial sense and Catholic, Huguenot, Dutch Calvinism, and Anglican in a religious sense, it is not easy to separate the intertwined inheritance.

It is of interest, however, without attempting and far-fetched conclusions to set forth the main lines of Bishop Bayley's descent. He was descended from the LeConte family whose records go back to the 13th Century in France. Noblemen whose estates were centered in Normandy, the LeContes were distinguished in military service and administration for seven centuries. Exchanging the ancient Catholic faith so associated with Normandy for the Huguenots . . . equally associated with Normandy, they went through the La Rochelle experience, flourished for a little after the Edict of Nantes and, when Louis XIV rejected the Edict, fled to the French islands in the Caribbean. Persecution was stayed there for a little, and the family, successful traders and merchants, opened lines of mercantile communication with Charleston, New York and New Rochelle. When Louis XIV began to threaten the Huguenots in the islands, they moved on to Charleston, New Rochelle and New York. (Parenthetically, while it had no reference to the descent of Bishop Bayley, the Charltons, parents of Elizabeth Ann Bayley, followed the same course and settled in Staten Island.) It was the custom of the Huguenots to settle in tight racial familial groups and, as a result for at least two generations, the refugee Huguenots, from the islands and the Southern colonies preferred New Rochelle as the center of their life. While their church was established in Manhattan, they preferred to walk the long miles from New Rochelle to Manhattan. This willingness to travel long distances for the practice of their religion may constitute a clue to the willingness of their descendant, Bishop Bayley, to travel innumerable miles in the actual missionary territory of New Jersey where he was the Bishop.

The first ancestor of Bayley who was truly a member of the New World society was Guillaume LeConte, born in 1659 in Rouen in Normandy, served in the army of William and Mary (as did many Huguenots in a kind of reprisal for their treatment by France) came to America, went down to Martinique, found a wife, Marguerite de Valleau (note the cemetery in Ridgewood, N.J. where those who rest are either descendants of Dutch Calvinists or Huguenots), and fathered two sons and one daughter, dying in New York in 1711. His son, William LeConte, bore about 1694, Married Marianne Mercier. One daughter, Susanne, according to one set of genealogical records, married William Besly (later Anglicized to Bayley) from whom eventually William Bayley and Richard Bayley (father of Elizabeth Ann and grandfather of Dr. Richard Bayley were born. According to a second set of conclusions, William married first. Elise Anne Besly and their daughter, Elise Anne LeConte married William Bayley (from England). William and Richard were their sons, and Mother Seton their granddaughter and James Roosevelt their great-grandson. To this moment these varying accounts have not been squared although in a letter written by Bishop Bayley, the changing of Beslie to Bayley was denied and the English William Bayley was seen as the husband of Elise Anne LeConte and the father of Richard and William, and the grandfather of James Roosevelt Bayley. The conflict has been caused by contradicting letters and apparently conflicting records in the church at New Rochelle. Baird, the traditional historian of the Huguenots in America prefers the Beslie/Bayley transformation. Later historians have attempted to cancel what seem to have been a misimpression formed by inaccurate reading and a casual acceptance of some family musings.

Be that as it may, it is clearly evident that James Roosevelt, on his father's side was formed in a Huguenot milieu. Richard Bayley, the grandfather of Bishop Bayley, married, first Catherine Charlton, the sister of the Doctor (John Charlton who had taught Bayley the science of medicine. While it is not pertinent to the heritage of Bishop Bayley, Richard Bayley and his first wife (the daughter of an outstanding Divine on Staten Island) were married in St. John's Anglican Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. A further investigation into this area, while not of the essence of Bayley's descent, uncovered the fact that Elias Boudinot was the husband of Mother Seton's aunt. Before retreating from this external area, it is of interest to note that the Charitons were blood relatives of the Dongan family, one of whom a Catholic, was Governor of New York, until he was turned out (undoubtedly because of his Faith and the establishment of a Catholic chapel in the fort on Manhattan). In addition, the Charltons were connected not only with the Boudinots but the Bayards, the Schuylers, and the Lispenards as well.

To return to the direct ancestry of Bishop Bayley is to return to a genetic association that is almost bewildering. Richard Bayley, on the death of his first wife Catherine, married Charlotte Amelia Barclay. (One cannot refrain from remarking that there are streets in Manhattan today that bear the names of all these Colonial families.) Charlotte Barclay, Grandmother of Bishop Bayley, was the daughter of Andrew Barclay and the niece of Harry Barclay the second Rector of Trinity Church (Anglican). It is interesting to note the slow passage from the non-episcopal determination of the Huguenots to the iron- willed episcopacy of the Anglican Church. She was as well, the sister of Ann Dorothy) wife of one of the first Jews in New York. "Cosmopolitan" scarcely defines the family. Their son, Guy Carleton Bayley (1786-18, the future father of James Roosevelt Bayley, married in 1813, Grace Walton Roosevelt (apparently a niece of one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence!) She was the daughter of James Roosevelt whose ancestry was undiluted Dutch Calvinism from the family's arrival in New Amsterdam in 1649. The five ancestors who preceded her were leaders in the Dutch mercantile society of Manhattan.

Put together, the heritage of Bishop Bayley was a blend of every kind on national and religious background. A descendant of non-conformists in the habit of progressing from one practice of religion to another, (at least two of his brothers became Catholics): a descendant from a series of families who were shrewd merchants and managers of large estates.- a descendant from the highest levels in Colonial society and politics; accustomed to the standards of refinement and culture; it is not too far-fetched a conclusion to recognize this mélange of heritage embodied in a kind of transmission from generation to generation rising in a deeply religious man, an introspective convert, a missioner of no small degree (witness his grandfather's willingness to sacrifice his life and career for the helpless and the ill), an educator, a practical, and shrewd administrator, perspicacious in his plans, persevering in their resolution, able to accommodate to all levels of society. It took a dozen generations to produce a person of the stature of James Roosevelt Bayley.