William Lawrence was elected as the 7th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
Background
Lawrence was the son of the notable textile industrialist Amos Adams Lawrence and a member of the influential Boston family, founded by his great-grandfather and American revolutionary, Samuel Lawrence. Lawrence was born in 1850 and graduated from Harvard College, as was the tradition in his family.
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Harvard, 1871. Bachelor of Sacred Theology, Episcopal Theological School, 1875, Doctor of Divinity, 1923. South.T.D., Hobart, 1890, Harvard University, 1893.
Doctor of Laws, Princeton, 1904, Cambridge, 1908, Lawrence, 1910, Boston University, 1923, Harvard, 1931.
Doctor of Divinity, Durham, 1908, Yale University, 1909, Columbia, 1911, Trinity College, 1925, Williams College, 1930.
Career
He earned his Doctor of Divinity (Doctor of Divinity) degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1897. Lawrence is best known for founding the church pension system. He was also known as "the banker bishop" because his fund-raising drives "invariably developed with Midas-like magic." The financier J. P. Morgan, Junior. served as treasurer of the Church Pension Fund from its founding in 1918.
Also, while in retirement, he realized the need for a chapel at Massachusetts General Hospital and in the late 1930s, as the White Building was under construction, convinced of the importance of faith and spirit in healing, he sent over fifteen hundred hand-written letters to friends of the hospital asking for their support "in this bit of pioneer hospital work." Over eight hundred people of all faiths responded.
In 1926, Lawrence published his autobiography, Memories of a Happy Life. William Appleton Lawrence was elected 3rd Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts (1925-1941) and Frederic C. Lawrence was elected suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1956-1968).
Lawrence"s daughter Sarah founded the Junior League of Boston in 1906. The "banker bishop" is quoted as having said, "In the long run it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes.
We, like the Psalmists, occasionally see the wicked prosper, but only occasionally.
Godliness is in league with riches.”.
Achievements
Connections
Married Julia Cunningham, 1874 (died 1927). Children: Marian (Mistress Harold Peabody), Julia (Mistress Morton Fearey), Sarah (Mistress Charles L. Slattery), Rosamond (deceased), Ruth (Mistress Lansing P. Reed), William Appleton, Eleanor (Mistress Lewis Hunt Mills), Frederic Cunningham.