History
St. Mary's was founded as a "North Memphis" mission chapel by the Ladies' Educational and Missionary Society of Calvary Church (the city's first Episcopal parish) with oversight from Calvary's rector, Charles Quintard, who later became the second bishop of the Diocese of Tennessee. Quintard led the chapel's first service on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1857. An item in the Memphis Appeal, dated November 29, describes the occasion:
The Mission Church on Poplar Street. This Church which has been erected by the pious zeal of the ladies belonging to the Episcopal Church of this city was organized Thanksgiving Day by the election of wardens and vestrymen. The Church is called St. Mary's, and the Reverend Richard Hines has been chosen rector. Mr. Hines has arrived in the city and will preach at St. Mary's this morning. The seats are all free, the expenses of the Church are defrayed by the offering of the congregation.
Unlike its mother church, Calvary, this new parish would not have designated family pews or charge rent for them, enabling less affluent Memphians to regularly attend Episcopal services for the first time.
Sisters' Chapel and St. Mary's School, 1900 |
|
| Monastery information | |
|---|---|
| Other names | St. Mary's School for Girls, Church Home |
| Order | Community of St. Mary (Episcopal) founded in New York, NY, 1865 as the "Sisterhood of St. Mary" |
| Established | 1873, at request of Bishop Charles Quintard |
| Disestablished | 1910, when the sisters formally moved to St. Mary's on the Mountain Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee |
| Mother house | Mount St. Gabriel Convent, Peerskill, New York |
| Diocese | Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee |
| People | |
| Founder(s) | Sister Constance, superior at Memphis; Sister Harriet, founder and mother superior, Sisterhood of St. Mary |
| Important associated figures | Constance and her Companions (yellow fever martyrs listed in the Episcopal Calendar of Saints) |
| Site | |
| Location | On the close of St. Mary's Cathedral, Memphis, Tennessee |
| Visible remains | Sisters' Chapel (on the cathedral close), group grave marker of yellow fever martyrs at Elmwood Cemetery |
St. Mary's was officially consecrated as a parish church on Ascension Day, May 13, 1858 by the Rt. Rev. James Hervey Otey, the first bishop of Tennessee, with assistance from the rectors of Calvary and Grace (Memphis), St. Luke's (Jackson), St. Mary's (Covington), St. James (Bolivar), and by the new parish's own rector, Richard Hines, who would remain there until 1871.
Read more about this topic: St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral In Memphis
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