The Rev. Joseph Sandiford Atwell (1831-1881) was the first documented Black clergyman ministering to St. Philip’s Church, Richmond, as well as the first Black man ordained a priest in the Diocese of Virginia. Born in Barbados, he was educated at Codrington College, an Anglican school in Barbados.
After graduation from the Episcopal Church’s Philadelphia Divinity School in 1866, he commenced missionary work in Kentucky under the auspices of the American Church Missionary Society. There he was ordained an Episcopal Church deacon in 1866 by the Rt. Rev. Benjamin B. Smith, Bishop Kentucky. Atwell’s ministry attracted the attention of the Rt. Rev. Francis M. Whittle, Bishop Coadjutor of Virginia.
Bishop Whittle actively recruited the Rev. Atwell to come to Virginia and take charge of the new and growing African American St. Stephen’s Church, Petersburg (then part of the Diocese of Virginia), where the Rt. Rev. John Johns, Bishop of Virginia, ordained him to the priesthood on May 7, 1869. Later that month the Vestry minutes of St. Philip’s Church, Richmond, recorded the formation of its first vestry and the commencement of the Rev. Mr. Atwell serving that congregation in addition to his ministry at St. Stephen’s, Petersburg.
After a year of conducting services twice a month at St. Philip’s while also serving the much larger St. Stephen’s congregation, the Rev. Mr. Atwell determined to discontinue his service at St. Philip’s and prioritize his ministry at St. Stephen’s.
The Rev. Mr. Atwell remained rector of St. Stephen’s until 1873 when he accepted a call to St. Stephen’s Church, Savannah, Georgia. In 1875, he was called to St. Philip’s Church, New York City, one of the oldest African American Episcopal congregations in the United States, where the Rev. Mr. Joseph S. Atwell died from typhoid fever on October 8, 1881.
Historical Sketches of Active African American Churches in the Diocese of Virginia
St. Philip’s, Richmond
In May 1861, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church officially opened in the 600 block of North Fourth Street, providing a separate worship location for African American Episcopalians in Richmond. The congregation combined the colored Sunday Schools of Monumental and St. James Churches and provided a church home for African Americans who had previously been set apart in the balconies of St. James’ and other local Episcopal Churches.
St. Philip’s received white clergy funded by the Diocesan Missionary Society as well as local Richmond Churches.
Unfortunately, St. Philip’s stood in the path of the April 1865 fire that destroyed much of Richmond. Through the assistance of the Diocese of Virginia, St. James’s, St. Paul’s, and Monumental Churches of Richmond, however, a new St. Philip’s was erected in 1869 on the southwest corner of Leigh and Fouschee (later St. James) Street.
The 1878 establishment of Bishop Payne Divinity School, Petersburg, Virginia, for the education of African Americans for holy orders in the Episcopal Church provided St. Philip’s with a steady source of rectors and seminarian assistance through Bishop Payne’s closure in 1949. Such leadership enabled the congregation to emerge from mission status in 1920, while ministering to and on behalf of Richmond African Americans through the challenges of both Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
Around 1960, changing Richmond residential patterns prompted St. Philip’s to purchase and relocate to the former Church of the Epiphany, Hanes and Essex Street, whose own congregation had relocated to the Lakeside area of the city.
In 1993, St. Philip’s expanded its facility with a new Parish Hall.
On November 17, 2018, their rector, Phoebe A. Roaf, was elected Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee on the first ballot.
Today St. Philip’s is shepherded by their new rector, the Rev. Marlene E. Forrest.
Meade Memorial, Alexandria
Unlike other African American Episcopal churches in Virginia, Meade Memorial, Alexandria, was not commenced as a mission or Sunday School specifically for African Americans. In the late 1860s, Christ Church, Alexandria, established a mission near the C&O Canal extension Georgetown, DC, to Alexandria. In late 1872, the Colored Sunday School of Christ Church, petitioned for a worship space dedicated to them and the Christ Church vestry placed the mission church at their disposal.
The following year, the building was physically moved to Princess and Columbus Streets, two blocks from Christ Church. At that time, the white members of the mission transferred to Christ Church and the African American members of Christ Church transferred to the newly consecrated Meade Memorial Chapel, named for the Rt. Rev. William Meade, third Bishop of Virginia.
Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, Meade Memorial remained in the subordinate position as a chapel or mission of a white congregation, thriving most visibly when ministered to by a deacon or priest of the race of its members.
By the early twentieth century, the old wooden mission structure needed replacement, and the church lot was inadequate for congregational needs. A new lot was purchased nearby at Alfred and Columbus Streets and a larger brick church was completed by 1913.
Ever since, Meade Memorial has remained at that location ministering both to the needs of its congregation and the surrounding African American community of other faiths.
Eventually, a parish house constructed, occasionally enlarged, and about 1990, the whole plant substantially enlarged and renovated, partially funded by loans from the Diocesan Missionary Society.
Today Meade Memorial is shepherded by the Rev. Collins E. Asonye.
St. Mary’s, Berryville
St. Mary’s Memorial Church, Berryville, traces its roots to late nineteenth-century ministry to Clarke County African Americans through a Sunday School for people of color at Wickliffe Parish and segregated worship at Grace Church, Berryville, Clark Parish.
Although a separate chapel, known as Christ Chapel, had been constructed for African Americans in Wickliffe Parish in the first years of the twentieth century, changing residential patterns soon prompted a movement for the construction of an African American church in the county seat of Berryville. Fundraising was conducted both within the local community and in the Diocese of Virginia at large, with appeals to potential white donors urging contributions to memorialize and honor “mammies” they had loved in their youth. Construction commenced in 1913, with the Rt. Rev. William Cabell Brown, Bishop Coadjutor of Virginia, consecrating the debt-free church on September 19, 1916.
During the nineteenth century, as well as in much of the early twentieth century, most congregations outside the largest Virginia urban areas, regardless of racial composition, were shepherded by clergyman whose ministry embraced a number of congregations.
The greater distances between the smaller number of African American congregations served by African American clergy, however, often required these multiple-cure ministers to travel great distances. Initially, St. Mary’s Berryville, shared its minister with the Christ Chapel of Wickliffe Parish. After that chapel closed in the 1920s and its facilities ministry moved to St. Mary’s campus, St. Mary’s priest was based at St. Philip’s, Charles Town, West Virginia, under an agreement between the bishops of Virginia and West Virginia.
For the past generation, St. Mary’s has lived that dual congregation arrangement in a different way.
St. Mary’s is shepherded by the Very Reverend Justin Ivatts.
Calvary, Hanover
The official ministry of Calvary, Hanover began with the 1917 appointment of Bishop Payne Divinity School graduate and newly ordained deacon, Lorenzo King, to missionary work among African Americans in Hanover County.
During his 1917-1918 ministry, the Rev. Deacon King founded a school and an Episcopal Sunday School for local African American children. The Sunday School, which met in the school, came to include occasional work at the same locale.
King was succeeded in 1919 by Thomas D. Brown, also a Bishop Payne Divinity School student, assigned to mission work in both Hanover and Charlottesville. Regular worship services commenced after Brown’s 1920 graduation and ordination, with work as priest-in-charge at both Calvary, and the newly established mission, Trinity, Charlottesville.
By the mid-1920s, the Calvary schoolhouse was given to the Diocese of Virginia and moved to a new “more suitable” location in the town of Hanover and continued its role as both a place of education and of worship. A cornerstone for a formal church building was laid on 02 November 1940, but the building was not completed until about 1948 due to construction disruptions caused by World War II and lack of funds. It remains the congregation’s church home to this day. The schoolhouse has been preserved on the church property and is used periodically for worship.
The ministry of Calvary Mission School was critical in the African American community in Hanover. From 1920 until 1956, the one-room schoolhouse served all of the African American children in the community. It included kindergarten through the fifth to seventh grades. A series of college-educated African American women, beginning with Miss Pearl C. Morgan, supervised 30 or more students at a time. Miss Morgan’s salary, of $30/month during the school term, was paid by the local Welfare League and the Diocese of Virginia. Salaries were later paid by the county. The first graduates of Calvary Mission School were Charles Green, Honor Student (given a pocket watch), and George William. The first Calvary student to graduate from college was Catherine G. Smith, who graduated from Virginia State and became a teacher. Many of the current members of the congregation were educated in the Calvary Mission School. It ceased operation as a school in 1956, when the county opened a larger public school to serve African American students.
Like many other Virginia country churches, as well as Virginia African American churches, Calvary’s clergy have held multiple simultaneous cures in addition to this congregation. Such configurations have included Trinity, Charlottesville; St. Philip’s, Richmond; Osgood Memorial, Richmond (closed in 1960s); Grace, Millers Tavern; St Paul’s, West Point, and Advent, Fredericksburg (closed 1949), all of which were founded as African American churches or missions.
In addition, Calvary has been yoked with traditionally white congregations including St. Paul’s, Hanover, and St. James-the-Less, Ashland, or served by part-time clergy.
Today Calvary is part of the Commission on Congregational Missions and is shepherded by the Reverend Anthony Gaboton.
Trinity, Charlottesville
After the Civil War, a number of different Episcopal congregations in the Charlottesville/Albemarle County area conducted Sunday schools and held worship services for local African Americans. None of these efforts grew into a full-fledged, sustained congregation until the founding of Trinity, Charlottesville in 1919.
During that summer, Bishop Payne Divinity School student, Thomas D. Brown, was employed by the Diocesan Missionary Society for missionary work to African Americans in both Hanover and Charlottesville. Initial services were held August 17, 1919, at Odd Fellow Hall, Charlottesville, and regular services and a Sunday School commenced September 21.
With assistance from the Diocesan Missionary Society, Trinity’s first building was purchased at Preston and High Streets. In 1940, Trinity moved to a second location at 10th Street and Grady Avenue, occupying a church built from sections of the Church of the Ascension, Palmyra, Fluvanna County.
Trinity constructed its present church edifice at 1042 Preston Avenue, consecrated in 1974. The Most Rev. John E. Hines, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, participated in the groundbreaking, while his successor, the Most Rev. John M. Allin, conducted the consecration service.
Like most other African American congregations in the Diocese of Virginia, the Black Trinity clergyman served multiple cures during the early years of the congregation. Most often, Trinity was linked with St. Paul’s, Gordonsville, St. Mary’s, Somerset, and St. Margaret’s, Orange, all in Orange County, and all of which closed in the early 1950s.
At other times, Trinity shared its clergyman with the more distant St. Mary’s Memorial, Berryville, Clarke County. Since the mid-1950s, however, Trinity has been shepherded by its own full-time clergy, and achieved full parish status in the Diocese of Virginia in 2018.
Today the multicultural congregation of Trinity, Charlottesville, is shepherded by the Rev. B. Cass Bailey.
St. Peter’s, Richmond
While a number of sources imply 1915 as a formal commencement date for St. Peter’s, in Richmond’s East End, its roots extend much earlier to St. John’s, Church Hill. Prior to the Civil War, St John’s conducted a Sunday school for nearby African Americans. This ministry continued and grew during the post-war decades.
To meet the increasing need for more space, an abandoned pre-Civil War chapel of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent, was dismantled in the 1880s and moved to North 28th Street, Richmond on land donated by a member of St. John’s and named Chapel of the Good Shepherd. This mission continued under the oversight of St. John’s until 1924, when the newly independent St. Philip’s, Richmond, was assigned the Good Shepherd mission work. By 1937 Good Shepherd was renamed St. Peter’s, presumably in reference to the New Kent County parish where the building was originally located.
Since that time, St. Peter’s has occupied three additional locations in the East End: a converted store front at 27th and P; the old Christ Church at 22nd and Venable; and its current location at 22nd and X Streets, a former Pentecostal Holiness Church purchased in 1959 with the assistance of the Diocesan Missionary Society.
St. Peter’s has remained a mission church throughout its congregational life, but it has been served by its own full-time priest since 1952. Like its neighbor, the Peter Paul Development Center, St. Peter’s is located in a working-class community and near particularly economically challenged parts of Richmond, calling both to neighborhood ministries unique among the Episcopal churches of the city.
St. Peter’s is currently shepherded by the Rev. Bill Queen, Vicar.
Note:
There are a number of Black congregations and missions that are no longer active or that we are still discovering; among them St. Paul’s (West Point), Grace (Miller’s Tavern), Osgood Memorial (Richmond), Advent (Fredericksburg), Good Shepherd (Alexandria), St. Andrew’s Upright (Northern Neck), St. Mark’s (Beazley), St. Margaret’s (Orange) and John Moncure Chapel (Stafford).