A Late 1890s Vacation from a Tense Ministry

By Bradford MacGowan and Bernie Zelitch

Rev. George F. Kenngott and wife, Lucretia Lewis Kenngott, share a loving moment in the late 1890s at their retreat from Lowell in Isle au Haut, Maine. All photos by John Turner, courtesy of Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society, unless otherwise noted.

In 1895, three years after Rev. George F. Kenngott (1864-1934) arrived at First Congregational Church Lowell, his progressive views became the center of what was surely the city’s most public religious controversy.

Photographs of Kenngott and his wife, Lucretia Lewis Kenngott (1869-1964) show them relaxing during this trying time. They suggest the way they forgot their troubles was very similar to how people do it today: a vacation getaway, in their case, to a small island in the Penobscot Bay, Isle Au Haut. That’s where Lucretia grew up and where much of her family remained, including her uncle John Turner who took these photos.

The photos on this page came from a box of glass plate negatives owned by the Deer Isle Stonington Historical Society. There are no known photos of the Kenngotts while they lived in Lowell.

A December 22, 1895 line drawing of Kenngott (left, Boston Sunday Post) helps us date the portrait of him below in Maine to maybe 1896-97, or the time of his troubles with the old church and founding a new church. Kristin Lewis of the Isle au Haut Historical Society said when he visited, he was called “Kenny” and he filled the local church when he preached. Perhaps in the photo below he is writing a sermon.

In 1892, Kenngott first became pastor at First Congregational, later known as the Smith Baker Center and today the Lowell Center for the Arts. A graduate of Amherst College and Andover Theological Seminary, he appeared destined for a distinguished ministry. During his installation service, Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Boynton of Union Congregational Church, Boston, urged him to carry the church’s mission beyond its sanctuary into “the tenements of the poor as well as the mansions of the rich,” a challenge that foreshadowed Kenngott’s lifelong concern for the city’s working people. His early ministry was widely praised, and both he and his wife, who was noted for her musical abilities, quickly became popular figures within the congregation.

The Kenngotts bicycling on Isle au Haut.

By late 1895, however, newspapers seized on rumors that Mrs. Kenngott’s supposedly fashionable attire had scandalized conservative members, even claiming she had appeared in “a low-necked dress.” Contemporary accounts, however, repeatedly dismissed the story—one paper remarked that it was “nothing of the sort”, and treated it as little more than gossip.

Behind the headlines lay a far more significant dispute: a struggle over leadership, authority, and the future direction of the church. Kenngott’s energetic, reform-minded style of ministry clashed with a small but influential group of church leaders, while contemporary newspapers reported that nearly three-fourths of the congregation, especially its younger members, remained firmly behind him. After months of increasingly bitter meetings and unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to resign, Kenngott stepped down to prevent further division. The schism culminated in the organization of the First Trinitarian Congregational Church in 1896, where many of his supporters followed him, making it one of the most significant splits in Lowell’s church history.

Lucretia Kenngott relaxing on a hammock.

A photo of Lucretia probably taken in California after 1912 shows her flamboyant side. Courtesy Isle au Haut Historical Society.

The controversy proved to be a turning point rather than an ending. Kenngott increasingly devoted himself to studying Lowell’s housing, public health, education, municipal government, labor conditions, and immigrant neighborhoods, work that culminated in Record of a City. Shortly after its publication in 1912, he left Lowell for Los Angeles to become superintendent of the Congregational Church Extension Society. When he died in 1934, the Lowell Sun remembered him not for the church controversy but for his scholarship and progressive vision. Today, his work remains one of the most valuable contemporary accounts of Lowell during the Progressive Era and the challenges faced by its immigrant communities.

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Bradford MacGowan is secretary of Lowell Center for the Arts and Bernie Zelitch is founder and director of by Annie Powell