St. Mary's, Hilsboro Celebrates 150th

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Hillsboro, the oldest continuing congregation in the North Region of the Diocese of Texas, celebrated its 150th anniversary with a reception on Saturday, March 26, 2020 and a worship service on Sunday, March 27. Bishop Scott Mayer presided at the service and the Rev. Paula Jefferson preached. The Rev. Canon Janet Waggoner served as the bishop’s chaplain and the Rev. Bryn Skelton Caddell proclaimed the Gospel.

Proclamation

At the reception, Megan Henderson, city manager of Hillsboro, read a proclamation declaring March 26, 2022, as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Day in Hillsboro. The proclamation summed up the history of the church, including the 2021 loss of their building, and concluded: “WHEREAS, through all these changes St. Mary’s Episcopal Church remains faithful, loving and resolved to be Christ’s voice, hands, and feet in the world today; NOW, THEREFORE, I, Andrew L. Smith, Mayor of the City of Hillsboro, Texas, do hereby designate and declare Saturday, March 26, 2022 as: St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Day.. I hereby affix my signature this the 26th day of March, 2022. Andrew L. Smith, Mayor, City of Hillsboro, Texas.”

History

The Right Rev. Alexander Gregg, the first Episcopal bishop of Texas, made three visits to Hillsboro: September 1860, November 1871, and October 1873. St. Mary’s was founded in 1872 when Sarah Margaret Sturgis (1824-1895) started a Sunday school in her front parlor. It became St. Mary’s Mission when church services were added. Sturgis’ husband, Littleton J. Sturgis (1830-1885) was the publisher of The Expositor, later named The Hillsboro Mirror. It was the city paper for 90 years.

Alexander Charles Garrett, D.D., was consecrated the first Bishop of the Missionary District of North Texas on Dec. 20, 1874. His see was at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Dallas. Six parishes were recorded in his district at that time. After his first visit to “Hillsborough” he described it as “a poor town of about three or four hundred located in a beautiful country.”

Bishop Garrett laid the cornerstone of the original church on July 30, l886. The first service in that building was held on March 30, 1887. Seven years later, the building was destroyed by a tornado.

“Tarleton Morrow, then a small boy, crawled under the rubble and brought out the wooden cross which had rested on the altar,” according to a history of the parish. Services were then held in a temporary building beginning on March 24, 1895. Next, a brick Gothic revival building was constructed. Bishop Garrett laid the cornerstone on Dec. 16, 1910. The building was completed in 1911.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church has always been small but faithful. It has relied on lay leadership with a succession of traveling supply priests who might be in town once a month.

Early lay members Littleton J. and Sarah Margaret Sturgis founded the church. G.D. Tarleton, lay reader from 1906-1912, bought the land for the church. Tarleton, Tarleton and Morrow was the major law firm in Hillsboro in the 1890s. Congressman Jo Abbott’s wife was Rowena Sturgis Abbott.

Dr. Frank McDonald was senior warden from about 1910-1930. In 1915, the church sold him the middle lot of three on 200 N. Abbott St. His sons gave the property back to the church in 1984 to use as a parish hall and vicarage. In 150 years only two vicars have ministered to the congregations of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church for longer than four years. The Rev. Walter Meyers served from 1920-1927 and again from December 1931 to January 1934. The Rev. Wentworth A. Reiman served Sept. 1, 1964, to March 1, l971.

In 2008, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth suffered a schism when the bishop at the time left the Episcopal Church but claimed Episcopal Church property. St. Mary’s was split 50-50. For the next 12 years St. Mary’s was the only church in the diocese to share space with its non-Episcopal Church counterpart. Episcopalians had their service at 11 a.m. while others had an earlier service. They shared flowers at Easter and Christmas. After 12 years of litigation, the Texas Supreme Court gave the building to those who had left the Episcopal Church.

The congregation learned from its history — services were held in Sarah Margaret Sturgis’ parlor, then in a new building, and after a tornado in a temporary building.

“After 110 years in the same building, we are again in a temporary building,” said a church leader. A statement shared on the church website delivers this spiritual perspective:

“But we remember that the church is not a building. We are the church. The church is wherever we are, just as God is with us wherever we are. In good times and in bad, through tornadoes and human-made destruction, the church, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church continues to celebrate God’s love and to be Christ’s voice, hands, and feet in the world today.”