Saint Matthew's church: San Mateo's cornerstone

On July 28, 1865, banker and philanthropist George Howard and his wife Agnes agreed to donate two acres along the county road for construction of the Episcopal Church of St. Matthew. Up until then, the Episcopal community had been meeting at Miss Buckmaster's Laurel Hall, a school for young women.

Two months later, on October 12, Reverend A.L. Brewer supervised the laying of the cornerstone for St. Matthew's, likely the first stone building erected on the Pacific Coast. The cornerstone contained several mementos, including records from church, a collection of period coins, a Bible and Prayer Book, and some daily San Francisco papers. It also included telegraphs from the eastern United States, reporting the occupation of Richmond, the surrender of Lee, and the assassination of Lincoln.

One fascinating story pertaining to the first church depicts a famous bronze church bell, known as the Easton Bell.

In 1857, Adeline Mills, sister of longtime church vestryman Darius Ogden Mills, married ship builder Ansel Easton. They boarded a vessel (either the SS Sonora or SS Central America) sailing toward Central America. Skippered by a Captain Herndon, the ship ran aground near North Carolina's Cape Hatteras. For Easton's heroism in seeing to the safety of the passengers, the captain awarded him with a bronze bell from the ship. In turn, Easton gave the bell to his brother, Reverend Giles Easton, the resident missionary who celebrated the first Episcopal service at St. Matthew's site in 1864.

The Easton bell managed to survive crashing through the church tower during the 1906 earthquake. However, it was stolen from its outdoor mounting in May of 1986, never to be returned.

The list of attendees at the 1865 cornerstone ceremony reads like a who's who in San Mateo History: Charles Polhemus, known as the Father of San Mateo; William C. Ralston and Alvinza Hayward of the lucrative Bank of California; and Darius Ogden Mills, whose daughter would spearhead the building of San Mateo's first private hospital.

Mills Hospital came from the creative mind of Elizabeth Mills Reid, who had been active in the Red Cross. She became concerned after a close friend, Abby Parrot Payson, had lost both her son and daughter to illness. Originally established in 1908 as nurses' quarters in a cottage on church property, the facility quickly grew into an emergency hospital, able to receive six patients.

Architect Lewis Hobart built the French Gothic wooden addition to the hospital in 1911, when it became known by its original name "The Church of St. Matthew's Red Cross Hospital." The hospital became known as Mills Memorial during World War II.

St. Matthew's influence upon the community spread in other ways. Rector Brewer founded St. Matthew's Hall, the West Coast's premier military school. The famous Armitage orphanage, which operated between 1886 and 1920, had been designated as one of St. Matthew's first charity.

The devastating 1906 earthquake ruined the 1866 church and its fabulous bell tower. On May 15, 1910, the congregation buried a new cornerstone, containing all the artifacts from the original stone. Under the spiritual guidance of Reverend Neptune Blood William Gallaway, famed church architect Willis Polk engineered the new edifice. Considered one of the most beautiful houses of worship in California, it recalls the 11th century Stokes Poges Church in London, where Thomas Gray reportedly penned the poem "Elegy in a Country Churchyard."

In anticipation of future earthquakes, the ingenious Polk infused steel framing and reinforced concrete in the otherwise Gothic-style stone church. The rectangular nave features a steeply sloping gable roof, which smaller gables projecting over the main entryways stone. The prominent stained glass window at the back gable features a pointed arch with series of slender ogee and lancet arches, topped by trefoil. The inside window, donated by Elizabeth Mills Reid in honor of her father, colorfully depicts the Nativity of Jesus.

Under the east end of the church resides the crypt set aside for the Howard family, the prime benefactors of the early church. The Howard crypt story features perhaps the most controversial early figure in the church, Agnes Poett Howard Bowie.

Agnes Poett married William Davis Merry Howard in 1849. After William died in January of 1856, Agnes Poett Howard married William's brother George, on October 18, 1857, keeping her name in the family. In honor of William, George and Agnes donated the money to build the crypt under the stone church.

When George died in 1878, Agnes, 41, turned around and married attorney Henry Pike Bowie, 31, on June 23, 1879. To share her new husband's faith, Agnes converted to Catholicism. She thus denied herself burial in the Howard family crypt, whose construction she had inspired twenty-two years previous.

A major expansion of the church occurred in the 1950's, under the direction of Rector Lesley Wilder. The construction of a new parish house included classrooms for the Church and Day School, church offices, a sexton's apartment, and general meeting rooms. The church nave gained another thirty feet, enlarging the capacity from 306 to 466. The $375,000 augmentation was completed in time for Christmas of 1957.

The 100th anniversary of the church, celebrated in 1965, set the scene for one of the more intriguing episodes of the church's history. As the Episcopal Church is an extension of the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited St. Matthew's to help celebrate the centennial. The Most Reverend and Right Honorable Arthur Michael Ramsey, DD, stayed at the rectory of the Episcopal Church of St. Matthew, then located at 1925 San Raymundo Road in Hillsborough.

According to the book 'County Chronicles,' Archbishop Ramsey decided to take a stroll among the estates of Hillsborough. An intrepid Hillsborough police officer apparently noticed this unknown character wandering the exclusive lanes. When Ramsey introduced himself as the Archbishop of Canterbury, without producing sufficient identification, the officer apparently escorted him down to the Hillsborough police station. Further details remain cloudy.

Over the years, the Episcopal Congregation has wrestled with the kinds of philosophical arguments which periodically beset all religious groups. In 1977, the topics of the ordination of women and the revision of the Book of Common Prayer became particularly divisive, actually forcing the resignation of the staunchly conservative rector.

Through it all, however, the Church of St. Matthew's has endured in its varied forms, as the ecclesiastical cornerstone of the city.<