The Rev. Mr. Collyer Preaching on the Site of his Church

The Rev. Mr. Collyer Preaching on the Site of his Church

The Rev. Mr. Collyer Preaching on the Site of his Church, 1871
(Harper's Weekly) Body and Soul

Like the Kerfoot Block and the Tribune editorial, the story of this simple service was cited often in the reporting of the fire. Collyer was the minister of Unity Church, at the southeast corner of Dearborn and Lafayette (now Walton) Streets, opposite Washington Square Park and near the Mahlon Ogden home. Born in Yorkshire, Collyer was trained as a blacksmith before becoming a minister and emigrating to America. He was an ardent abolitionist during the Civil War era and one of the city's most beloved preachers. North Division resident Emma Hambleton told her mother in a letter written right after the fire that, while fleeing herself, she ran into Collyer, who told her, "We are no longer safe here. I have just seen the last of my home, and now my church must go." Hambleton added, "The great man sobbed like a babe." On the first sabbath after the fire, Collyer met with members of several congregations among the ruins of Unity in a gathering that one fire history likened to "a convention of early Christians in the catacombs." Such incidents seem to prove that Chicago's moral character had been purified and strengthened by the fire. In his remarks that Sunday, Collyer admitted that it was still too soon "to find some altitude of soul, some height of moral sentiment, from which I might look down and thank God for overshadowing us with this great sorrow," but a month later he told a congregation in Boston that he had forsaken all his doubts, "just as Job did."
The lower image is titled "Laying the corner-stone of the first building after the fire." The physical and spiritual rebuilding are thus presented here as counterparts of each other.


	The Rev. Mr. Collyer Preaching on the Site of his Church, 1871 (Harper's Weekly)	Body and Soul
	Like the Kerfoot Block and the Tribune editorial, the story of this simple service was cited often in the reporting of the fire. Collyer was the minister of Unity Church, at the southeast corner of Dearborn and Lafayette (now Walton) Streets, opposite Washington Square Park and near the Mahlon Ogden home. Born in Yorkshire, Collyer was trained as a blacksmith before becoming a minister and emigrating to America. He was an ardent abolitionist during the Civil War era and one of the city's most beloved preachers. North Division resident Emma Hambleton told her mother in a letter written right after the fire that, while fleeing herself, she ran into Collyer, who told her, "We are no longer safe here. I have just seen the last of my home, and now my church must go." Hambleton added, "The great man sobbed like a babe." On the first sabbath after the fire, Collyer met with members of several congregations among the ruins of Unity in a gathering that one fire history likened to "a convention of early Christians in the catacombs." Such incidents seem to prove that Chicago's moral character had been purified and strengthened by the fire. In his remarks that Sunday, Collyer admitted that it was still too soon "to find some altitude of soul, some height of moral sentiment, from which I might look down and thank God for overshadowing us with this great sorrow," but a month later he told a congregation in Boston that he had forsaken all his doubts, "just as Job did." The lower image is titled "Laying the corner-stone of the first building after the fire." The physical and spiritual rebuilding are thus presented here as counterparts of each other.