Sacramento’s second Unitarian minister was a local businessman who had been ordained at age forty-five. Born Charles P. Massey, Jr., on 17 March 1842 in Philadelphia, he graduated from Philadelphia High School in July of 1858. He worked there in a mercantile house until 1863, when he migrated to San Francisco. In 1869 he married Miss Asenoth O. Dodge of Dodgeville, Massachusetts, to whom two daughters were born by 1872. In 1874 they moved to Sacramento where he went into the carpet and upholstery business until 1879, when he owned and operated the Grove Dairy located one mile southeast of the city. His dairy property was then valued at $12,500, a substantial sum in that era, until it was destroyed by fire in 1880.1 His wife, Asenoth, was active in charitable works. By 1877 she was a member of the Board of Directors of the newly organized Marguerite Women’s Home. Mrs. E. B. Crocker, widow of Judge Crocker, was its president, and donated the land for the home, which was dedicated to maintaining a place of refuge for sick and homeless women.2
There are no surviving local church records prior to 1892. However, an 1889 newspaper account has preserved a statement of the religious philosophy of Reverend Charles Massey; this provides an insight into the nature of Sacramento Unitarian beliefs of the period of 1887–1889 as expressed from the pulpit in a Sunday service. That service was on Sunday, 27 October 1889. The occasion was a dedication celebration of the first Unitarian meeting in the newly constructed Pythian Castle at 9th & I Streets, after having previously used Pioneer Hall on I Street. Here the newspaper account of that occasion is quoted in part:
DEDICATORY SERMON DELIVERED BY REV. C. P. MASSEY
The Unitarian Society Holds Its First Service
in the New Pythian Castle
The new Pythian Castle was filled almost to its capacity yesterday morning, the initial use of the building having been given to the First Unitarian Society for its religious services, and a programme of more than usual interest was presented. An efficient choir, composed of Miss Emma Felton, Miss Hattie Wheat. Mr. Richard Cohn and Mr. George W. Shannon, with Miss Gertie Gerrish as organist, and Mr. Charles A. Neale as special accompanist, occupied the neat little gallery, which was tastefully curtained, and rendered the following selections: “Venite” (Buck), quartet, “Calvary” (Rodney), trio; soprano, tenor and bass; “Stars of the Night Shine O‘er Us” (Campana), offertory; “Angels‘ Serenade;‘ soprano solo, with flute obligato; and quartet, “Guide Me, 0, Thou Great Jehovah.”
Rev. C. P. Massey took for his text 1 Timothy 5: “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”
The content of his sermon is summarized briefly as follows:
The use of the Knights of Pythias Castle was dedicated to Almighty God, in recognition that in spite of the years and Changes in thought which have occurred in consequence of enlarging knowledge of the world, there remains a need for religious sentiment with which to meet the emotions of awe, of wonder, of terror, of love, of delight arising from the mystery by which we feel ourselves eternally surrounded.
These emotions belonging to such gifted souls as Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Mohammed and Jesus have been regarded as revelation. But the humblest among us has the power and facility of testing the truth of revelation by individual experience. There is not a marriage, birth or death but which can lift the horizon of our little souls into a potential greatness and majesty of which we had not dreamed. That which we call revelation is at last found to be but the reaction of the boundless and the infinite upon the soul of man and which would make all mankind brethren in one common privilege in the unity of God, the continuity of nature and the solidarity of man.
Reverend Massey then dedicated the building to the service of the Infinite and Eternal One in the realization that it might be only a temple dedicated to formal worship by some, but with the hope that his listeners might be endowed with the mighty spiritual strength of those to whom the church became a rich possession in the past.
1 “Unitarianism on the Pacific Coast”, Arnold Crompton, Beacon Press, Boston, 1957; pp. 278, 288.
2 Ibid. p. 180
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