Houghton

Houghton

ton/' Am. Jour, of Sci. and Arts, Mar. 1848; Alvah
Bradish, Memoir of Douglass Houghton (1889) ; R. C.
Allen, memoir of Houghton, in Mich. Hist. Colls., vol.
XXXIX (1915); G. P. Merrill, "Contributions to a
Hist, of Am. State Geol. and Natural Hist. Surveys,"
U. S. Nat. Museum Bull. 109 (1920); full bibliog. of
Houghton's writings in J. M. Nickles, "Geologic Litera-
ture on North America," U. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 746
(1923) ; H. R. Schoolcraft, Narrative of an Exped.
through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake (1834);
H. B. Nason, Biog. Record of the^ Officers and Crads. of
the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1824-86 (1887) ;
J. W. Houghton, The Houghton Geneal. (1912) ; Demo-
cratic Free Press (Detroit), Oct. 28, 1845, and follow-
ing issues; Geol. Reports of Douglass Houghton (1928),
ed. by G. N. Fuller.] Q p j^

HOUGHTON, GEORGE HENDRIC (Feb.
i, i820-Nov. 17, 1897), Protestant Episcopal
clergyman, founder and rector of the Church of
the Transfiguration in New York City, was born
at Deerfield, Mass., the son of Edward Clark and
Fanny (Smith) Houghton and a descendant of
Ralph Houghton who emigrated from England
in the middle of the seventeenth century to Mas-
sachusetts. At the age of fourteen George
Houghton left his Puritan home for New York.
After varied experiences, including that of teach-
ing, he entered the University of the City of New
York and was graduated in 1842. He studied
theology under the direction of William A. Muh-
lenberg Iq.v.J at the same time teaching Greek
in St. PauPs College, Flushing, Long Island, of
which Muhlenberg was headmaster. The Ox-
ford (High-Church) Movement, which began in
England in 1833, made a lasting impression on
him. He was ordained deacon in 1845 %&& priest
in 1846, and was Muhlenberg's curate at the
Church of the Holy Communion in New York
until 1847. Then, after a period of non-parochial
activity, when he ministered to the sick and dying"
in Bellevue Hospital and devoted his time to the
underprivileged, he established regular religious
services at 48 East Twenty-Fourth Street, the
furnishings for the improvised church consisting
of borrowed school benches, a wheezy parlor or-
gan, and a reading desk of pine wood. The parish
was organized Feb. 12, 1849, as the Church of
the Transfiguration in the City of New York.
Later a site on Twenty-ninth Street, just east of
Fifth Avenue, was purchased, and a new building
was erected which was first occupied on Mar. 10,
1850. The present building was completed in
1864. Houghton's salary was augmented, be-
ginning in 1850, by five hundred dollars a year,
received as professor of Hebrew in the General
Theological Seminary.

Houghton responded in every way to the needs
of those who called upon him for help. During
the Civil War, it is said, he harbored negroes on
their way to the Canadian border; he established
a war hospital, and during the Draft Riots of

1863 he sheltered hundreds of helpless negro
children driven by a mob from the Colored Or-
phan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third
Street. Events following the death of the fa-
mous comedian, George Holland [q.v.], in 1870,
gave Houghton's church its popular name and
made it famous throughout America. Joseph
Jefferson and Holland's son called on the Rev.
William T. Sabine, rector of the Church of the
Atonement on Fifth Avenue, to make arrange-
ments for Holland's funeral* On learning that
Holland had been an actor, Sabine refused to
take the service. What followed, Joseph Jeffer-
son recorded in these words: "I paused at the
door and said: 'Well, sir, in this dilemma is
there no other church to which you can direct
me, from which my friend can be buried?' He
replied that 'there was a little church around the
corner* where I might get it done; to which I
answered: 'Then, if this be so, God bless "the
little church around the corner,"' and so I left
the house" (The Autobiography of Joseph Jef-
ferson, 1890, p. 340). News stories, editorials,
and songs on the variety stage gave emphasis to
the incident, which endeared the rector to the
people of the stage and has ever since made the
Little Church around the Corner a shrine to the
acting profession, who were known to Houghton
thenceforth as "the kindly folk." Houghton's
wife was Caroline Graves Anthon, the daughter
of John Anthon of New York.

[Geo. MacAdam, The Little Church Around the Cor-
ner (1925) ; J. W. Hooghton, The Houghton Geneal.
(1912); JV. Y. Times, Dec. 29,1870, Nov. 18,1897.]

G.E.S.

HOUGHTON, HENRY OSCAR (Apr. 30,
i823-Aug. 25, 1895), publisher, was born in the
village of Sutton, in northeastern Vermont, the
youngest but one of the twelve children of Capt
William and Mar ilia (Clay) Houghton. He was
descended from John Houghton who settled at
Lancaster, Mass., in 1650, His father, a tanner
by trade, was instinctively a rover and rarely
remained long in any community. At Bradford,
on the tipper Connecticut River, Henry attended
the local academy, but at thirteen he became a
printer's apprentice in the office of the Burling-
ton Free Press, in Burlington, Vt. Here he once
met Noah Webster, whose dictionaries he was
later to publish. He studied evenings and in
1839, through the initiative of his older brother
Daniel, he was allowed to prepare himself for
the University of Vermont, which he entered at
the age of nineteen. He worked his way in part,
being assisted also by his brother-in-law, David
Scott Graduating in 1846, with a debt of three
hundred dollars to pay off, he secured employ-
ment in Boston as a newspaper reporter and

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