A Double Life Perfected

By Jan 1919 great grandfather James Louis Hynes had been in the Baptist ministry for a decade, having worked his way up through churches in Cornwall and Freeport. The Bushwick Avenue Baptist Church was a thriving operation in the 1920s, part of a vibrant network of churches in the city. Newspaper articles and notices throughout the decade show the church to have been a venue of many religious services, classes, and social activities with Reverend Hynes at the center of everything.

The 1920s were a time of post-war optimism and relative prosperity which spurred ideological movements, including those of the church. It was the era of prohibition, perhaps the most evident symptom of the emboldened religious doctrines of the times.

Absent from all the newspaper accounts of the Bushwick Avenue Baptist Church of the 1920s is any hint of the turmoil inflicted upon his family by the Reverend Hynes, James–any hint of the double life he led and the care he must have taken to keep the two parts separate from each other.

Regardless, the church thrived throughout the era, even underwent a major renovation in 1924. A newspaper announcement of the completion of the renovation gives us our second photograph of James Hynes.

Some newspaper accounts give new insights into James and his family…

Old Orchard, Maine, is frequently mentioned as the site of a Baptist camp and retreat, and a favorite vacation spot of James and his family. Our mother and her brothers remember vacationing there in the late 1930s or early 1940s, one of a relatively small number of times they saw their grandfather.

Grandfather Gordon Hynes is mentioned with increasing frequency throughout the decade, as he moved toward his own career as a Baptist minister.

Music played a significant role in the family. Bessie played the piano and both James and Bessie sang. (We will see later that Son Gilbert was an accomplished musician throughout his life.)

It is interesting to note that James’ double life did not just apply him–it applied to his family as well. Bessie was fully involved in and committed to the activities of her husband’s church, her name appearing often in church notices. Their children, including their daughters, would continue in the traditions of the church throughout their lives, despite their first-hand knowledge of the depravities of their father, the Reverend Hynes.

The questions and contradictions are overwhelming.

One of these questions is whether James could possibly have kept his secrets from his congregation over a decade? It is inconceivable that there would not at least have been whispers. Everyone would have known that James’ daughters were not living at home. Would there not have been some fear on the part of parishioners for the safety of their own daughters?

I have to conclude that there was awareness in the church, but that it was accompanied by an extraordinary willingness to look the other way. The imperatives and doctrines of the church somehow took precedence over matters of mere human moral failings (in 2020, this sounds familiar). The result was collective silence in the church and in the family.

A century later this silence continues to reverberate in the family.