A TALE OF TWO FONTS

At the head of the center aisle in the nave of Saint Paul’s Church is a beautiful marble baptismal font. Its pedestal is decorated with daisies, and its basin is carved with the words of Ephesians 4:5, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Although the waters of Holy Baptism have been poured into it and applied to the heads of children and adults for nearly a century, the font commemorates a child who was baptized at Saint Paul’s but never had the opportunity to grow into the promises made for her.

Maria Isabel Crane, known to her family as Daisy, was born June 20, 1869 in Augusta. She was the first child of William Hamner Crane (1832-1912) and his wife, Gertrude Ogden Savage Crane (1843-1931), who had been baptized at Saint Paul’s Church just six weeks before her daughter was born. Daisy was christened at Saint Paul’s on April 28, 1870.

In March 1873, Daisy and her mother were traveling from Augusta to Savannah to visit her grandparents, John and Maria Savage, when they stopped over night at an inn. The following morning, as they were about to re-embark on their journey, they encountered, on the porch of the inn, a male guest apparently ill with smallpox.

Within days of their arrival in Savannah, Daisy began showing signs of smallpox. She was quarantined on the third floor of the Savage home, and a woman from what was then called the “pest house” was engaged to nurse her. Daisy’s grandfather, John Savage, knowing how terrible it was for such a little girl to be desperately sick with no loved one permitted to be near her, refused to stay out of her room. Daisy was only 3 years and 9 months old when she died March 21, 1873. Her grandfather paid the price for his loving devotion, dying of smallpox six days later.

Daisy and her grandfather were buried at Savannah’s Laurel Grove North Cemetery. Unwilling to expose the local Episcopal minister to the risk of contracting smallpox, William Crane read the Order of Burial for his little daughter at the cemetery with only the undertaker in attendance.

John Savage’s sacrifice to comfort his dying granddaughter helped make possible the lives of grandchildren he would never know. Even as she lost her beloved first child, Daisy’s mother was carrying another. On November 3, 1873, seven months after Daisy’s death, Gertrude Crane gave birth to a son, William Savage Crane (1873-1948).

On June 22, 1875, two days after little Daisy would have celebrated her sixth birthday, Gertrude Crane gave birth to another daughter, Gertrude Williams Crane, who was baptized at Saint Paul’s on September 26, 1875. That same year William and Gertrude Crane presented Saint Paul’s Church with a marble baptismal font dedicated to the memory of Daisy.

William Crane was elected to the Vestry of Saint Paul’s in 1878. On March 25, 1886, William and Gertrude celebrated the birth of their third daughter, Nellie Goodrich Crane. In 1894, when Nellie was 8 years old, William became Senior Warden of Saint Paul’s, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. During that time he would witness dozens of other baptisms at the font, which stood on the Epistle (left) side of the sanctuary.

Although he was 80 when he died, William Crane was to know the privilege of being a grandfather for only a year. His only son William never married. His older daughter Gertrude married John Richard Bentley, an insurance agent from Albany, New York. Their son, John Richard Bentley, born September 3, 1911, was baptized at Saint Paul’s on November 5, 1911, at the font given by his grandparents to commemorate their lost child.

The younger John Bentley was just four months old when his father died in February 1912 and his widowed mother brought him home to Augusta. William Crane died September 15, 1912, just a week after John’s first birthday. Gertrude Crane was luckier. She had the pleasure of watching her first grandchild grow up in her house, with the prospect that there would soon be more when her younger daughter Nellie married Theodore Pomeroy Washburn at Saint Paul’s Church on April 14, 1914.

On March 20, 1916, Nellie gave birth to her first child, Margaret Pomeroy Washburn. Two days later, on March 22, 1916, the Great Fire of Augusta burned Saint Paul’s Church and much of Augusta’s Old Towne and downtown. More than three thousand people lost their homes and workplaces in the fire, including many members of Saint Paul’s.

Miraculously, the baptismal font given by William and Gertrude Crane in memory of Daisy survived. Undaunted by their losses, the congregation of Saint Paul’s continued to gather for Sunday worship, holding services outdoors on the church grounds. On April 22, 1916, exactly a month after the fire, the flame-damaged font was dragged out of the ashes of the church and into the courtyard. There the Rev. George Sherwood Whitney baptized little Margaret and the congregation welcomed their newest member into the body of Christ – a sign of hope for the future.

Original Crane Font Damaged in 1916 Fire

When the new Saint Paul’s Church was finished, Gertrude Crane presented the parish with a new font, a close replica of the font she and her husband had given 45 years before. The remains of the original font are encased in the narthex of Saint Paul’s Church, and the newer font, now almost a century old, stands at the head of the church’s center aisle.

The second Crane font has a cover made of highly varnished wood and fine brass. It is adorned with a descending dove enclosed in a circle held up by a column shaped like a leaping fountain. An inscription on the cover commemorates the life of William Hamner Crane and his service to St. Paul’s Church:

1832  William H. Crane  1912

A Vestryman of St. Paul’s Church for 34 years

and Senior Warden of the Parish 1894 to 1912

Font Cover Honoring William Hamner Crane

Gertrude Crane was blessed to see the births of three more children to Nellie. When she died in 1931, she was buried next to her husband William Hamner Crane in Augusta’s Magnolia Cemetery. The story of Daisy and her death has been handed down through five generations of Gertrude and William Crane’s descendants.

John Richard Bentley, son of Gertrude Crane Bentley, became an Episcopal priest. He served as Vicar of St. Anne’s Church, Tifton, Georgia, and as a U.S. Navy chaplain in World War II. He was Rector of Christ Church, Tyler, Texas, for fourteen years before his death in 1964.

Little Margaret Pomeroy Washburn, baptized among the ashes of Saint Paul’s Church from “Daisy’s font,” married Charles Arthur Soule in 1940. Her second child and only daughter, Anne Pomeroy Soule, married Edgar Baughn Wilkin Jr. in September 1965. Anne and Ed’s daughter, Elizabeth Soule Wilkin, married Richard Allen Slaby, Jr., and in 2006, Soule and Rich’s sons, Richard Allen Slaby III and Hamner Crane Slaby (named for his great-great-grandfather William Hamner Crane) were baptized in the second font, the one given by their great-great-grandmother Gertrude Crane after the great fire.

Today, Anne and Ed Wilkin, Soule and Rich Slaby, and Richard and Hamner Slaby are all members of Saint Paul’s Church. Little Maria Isabel Crane, who died so young and so long ago, is still known as Daisy and has never been forgotten.

by Anne Wilkin and Susan Yarborough

Inscription at the base of the second baptismal font dedicated to the memory of Daisy