Ask Trinity Archives deals with the history of Trinity Church Wall Street, which is now into its fourth century in the same location in Lower Manhattan. A viewer of the video series recently sent a question about the origin of Trinity’s ownership of the land at Broadway and Wall Street.
The archives of Trinity Church Wall Street is a rare place, where digital records produced on a laptop or photos shot on an iPhone can be found alongside documents from the 17th century written in ink on parchment.
Alexander Hamilton died in his late forties, killed in 1804 in a duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr. Less known, at least until the Hamilton musical, is the death of Hamilton’s eldest child, Philip, at age 19, also in a duel, in 1801.
The history of Trinity Church Wall Street spans more than three centuries, and overlaps the history of both New York City and the United States, with those documents and stories preserved in an extensive archive.
The Rev. Kristin Kaulbach Miles, who leads Pastoral Care at Trinity Church Wall Street, and Jessica Heller, of Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute, talk about the many ways grief burdens our lives, especially in this current moment.
Trinity parishioner J. Chester Johnson discusses his book, Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and a Story of Reconciliation, and the legacy of racism and hope for reconciliation with fellow Arkansas native Catherine Meeks.
Sheila Walker, a black woman, and Chester Johnson, a white man, are both Arkansas natives, born in the same decade, with family ties to a race massacre that killed more than a hundred African Americans a century ago.