St. Anne's Church (Annapolis, Maryland)

St. Anne's Episcopal Church
St. Anne's Episcopal Church
	St. Anne's Church in 1906
Location	199 Duke Of Gloucester St, Annapolis, MD 21401
Country	United States
Denomination	Episcopal
Website	Official Website
History
Founded	1692
Architecture
Years built	First Church- 1704; Second Church- 1792; Third Church- 1858;
Administration
Diocese	Maryland
Clergy
Rector	The Rev. Manoj Mathew Zacharia

Last updated December 06, 2023

St. Anne's Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church located in Church Circle, Annapolis. The first church in Annapolis, it was founded in 1692 to serve as the parish church for the newly created Middle Neck Parish, one of the original 30 Anglican parishes in the Province of Maryland.^[1] It remains in use by the Parish of St. Anne, part of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

History

First church, colonial era: 1704-1775

St. Anne's was founded in 1692 after the passing of the Establishment Act. The Act allowed for the construction of the State House, King William's School, and St. Anne's, though due to the limited work force and insufficient funds, all of the projects were finished much later than expected. In 1694 the capital of Maryland was moved to Annapolis and the royal governor, Francis Nicholson, laid out a street plan centered on two circles, the larger for the State House and the smaller for the church, where St. Anne's is situated to this day.

Work started out slowly. The General Assembly did not allocate funds until 1695 and 1696. In 1699 specified that the dimensions of the church were to be 65 ft wide (20 m) and 30 ft long (9.1 m) with a porch and a tower that would hang a bell. The contractor, Edward Dorsey, was fired however, and fined 333 pounds for failure to work on the building.^[2] The building was not completed until some time after 1700, though in use by 1704, with some changes made to the structure in later years. It served Chapel Royal until 1715, when the Province of Maryland was returned to Lord Baltimore. A bell, which would call parishioners to services until it was destroyed by fire in 1858, was donated to St. Anne's by Queen Anne.

In 1758, Benedict Swingate Calvert (c.1730-1788), the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland, was married to his cousin, Elizabeth Calvert, in St Anne's Church, by the Reverend John Gordon.^[3] Elizabeth was the daughter of Maryland Governor Captain Charles Calvert Butler. The parish also became the focus of a dual patronage scandal in 1776-68, under its 17th rector, Bennet Allen and Governor Horatio Sharpe. Allen also acquired the living at St. James Herring Bay and attempted to hire it out, contrary to Maryland law and the vestry's instructions. Allen ultimately gave up St. Anne's (but not St. James) upon securing the most lucrative parish in the Colony, All Saints Church in Frederick, Maryland, although that vestry locked him out shortly after his arrival and forced him to flee to Philadelphia and hire a curate, before returning to England during the American Revolutionary War.^[4]^[5]

Nearly half of St. Anne's rectors, 21, served in the pre-Revolutionary period; many evidently left for better pay at other parishes in the region.^[2] Additionally, St. Anne's was often referred to by writers of the time as a "barn" rather than a "proper place of worship." Many locals asked the government for a new church in 1775. Their wish was granted, and in late 1775, the church was razed.

Second church: 1792-1858

After the original church was razed, the local government made plans to build a new church which was to be designed by Joseph Horatio Anderson, who was the architect of the State House. Unfortunately, construction had to be cancelled since it was planned at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The bricks and timber that were to be used to build to new church were sent to the Severn River to build a fort, and most of the work force went off to fight. During the War, St. Anne's parishioners worshiped at St. William's School, but as that began to become inadequate, a building was built on West Street as a temporary place for worship.

After the War officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the newly founded United States went into economic depression due to severe war debts and dislocation of accustomed trading patterns. This cause a further delay on the new church building's construction. Finally, in 1792, the new St. Anne's church was finished. It was much larger and more structurally secure than its predecessor. It was consecrated in 1792 by Bishop of Maryland Thomas John Claggett, the first Bishop of Maryland and a curate in the old church.

On February 14, 1858, a furnace fire practically destroyed the interior of the building. Most of the original documents from the old church burned, and a new church building was requested.

Third church: 1858-present

The third and present church was built in 1858. It was designed in a Romanesque Revival style and incorporated a portion of the old tower. Most of the church was built in that year, apart from the steeple which was finished in 1866 due to the Civil War. At the request of the city, a town clock was housed in the tower, and continues to be maintained by the city.^[2]

Burials in the churchyard

Related Research Articles

Old Saint Paul's Cemetery is a cemetery located in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is noted for the several important historical figures that are interred in its grounds.

William Smallwood was an American planter, soldier and politician from Charles County, Maryland. He served in the American Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of major general. He was serving as the fourth Governor of Maryland when the state adopted the United States Constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Plater</span> American politician (1735-1792)

George Plater III was an American planter, lawyer, and statesman from Saint Mary's County, Maryland. He represented Maryland in the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1780, and briefly served as the sixth Governor of Maryland in 1791 and 1792.

Christ Church is an Episcopal church located at 118 North Washington Street, with an entrance at 141 North Columbus Street, in Alexandria, Virginia. Constructed as the main church in the Church of England's Fairfax Parish, the building was designed by Col. James Wren, a descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.

Established in 1703, St. Michael's Church in downtown Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, is a founding parish of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. Its present building located at 140 North Warren Street was built in 1747–1748, and was renovated in 1810 and 1847–1848. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 29, 1982 as St. Michael's Episcopal Church.

Thomas John Claggett was the first bishop of the newly formed American Episcopal Church to be consecrated on American soil and the first bishop of the recently established (1780) Diocese of Maryland.

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Collington, Maryland is a historic place of worship dating back more than three centuries. Originally a chapel of ease for Queen Anne Parish, it became a separate parish in 1844.

St. James' Parish is a historic church located on Solomons Island Road in the hamlet of Tracys Landing, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States.

St. Paul's Church, also known as St. Paul's Church, Baden, or St. Paul's Parish, Prince George's County, is located at 13500 Baden-Westwood Road, in Baden, a community near Brandywine in Prince George's County, Maryland. It was originally constructed in 1733–1735. A porch on the north side was enclosed in 1769, and in 1793 an addition of 26 by 30 feet was made to the south side. The Bishop's Window, a memorial to Bishop Thomas John Claggett, is at the chancel window. In 1921 the sanctuary was widened and the chancel deepened.

The Christ Church Guilford, historically known as the "Old Brick Church," is an historic Episcopal church located about one mile from Guilford, now part of Columbia, in Howard County, Maryland. The small Georgian church was completed in 1809. It was constructed of handmade brick laid in English garden wall brick bond with unmarked joints.

St. Paul's Church is an historic Episcopal church located near the village of Fairlee, southwest of Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland. St. Paul's Church is one of the original thirty parishes created in 1692 by an Act of the General Assembly declaring the Church of England as the established religion of the Province of Maryland. The Georgian-styled building, completed in 1713, is the second-oldest Episcopal church on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Coventry Parish Ruins are the remnants of a historic Episcopal church located at Rehobeth, Somerset County, Maryland. Coventry Parish was one of the original 30 Anglican parishes in the Province of Maryland established when Maryland's legislators established the Church of England as the colony's government-supported religion in 1692. These old parishes often had a church and several chapels of ease near population centers. This building, stands surrounded by farm fields and a historic Presbyterian Church near the Pocomoke River in what was then called Rehoboth but is now Rehobeth, Maryland to distinguish it from a beachfront community in Delaware.

St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, more commonly called Old St. Paul's Church today, is a historic Episcopal church located at 233 North Charles Street at the southeast corner with East Saratoga Street, in Baltimore, Maryland, near "Cathedral Hill" on the northern edge of the downtown central business district to the south and the Mount Vernon-Belevedere cultural/historic neighborhood to the north. It was founded in 1692 as the parish church for the "Patapsco Parish", one of the "original 30 parishes" of the old Church of England in colonial Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Mary Anne's Episcopal Church</span> Church in Maryland, USA

St. Mary Anne's Episcopal Church is an historic Episcopal church building located at 315 South Main Street in North East, Cecil County, Maryland. Built in 1742 of red brick in a rectangular shape to replace an earlier wooden church building on the site, it is the second parish church building for North Elk Parish, later known as St. Mary Anne's Parish, which had been established in 1706 by the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland. Originally dedicated to St. Mary, the parish added Anne to its name in thanks for a bequest it received from the estate of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, who died in 1714. Its bell tower was added in 1904.

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church is a historic Carpenter Gothic style Episcopal church building in St. Margaret's, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Built in 1892 on the brick foundation of a previous church building, it is the fourth building constructed to serve Broad Neck Parish, which was established in 1692 as one of the 30 original Anglican parishes in colonial Maryland

Bennet Allen was an English priest and miscellaneous writer.

All Saints Church, or All Saints Episcopal Church, founded in 1742, is a historic Episcopal church now located at 106 West Church Street in the Historic District of Frederick, Maryland. It is the seat of All Saints Parish, Diocese of Maryland, which covers most of Frederick County, Maryland and once covered most of Western Maryland.

St. John's Episcopal Church, Zion Parish in Beltsville, Maryland is a historic place of worship whose congregation dates back more than two centuries.

Christ Church, or Christ Episcopal Church, is an Anglican church in Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia. The church was founded in 1738, with its first vestry elected in 1742. It is the seat of Frederick Parish, Diocese of Virginia, which once covered half of the Shenandoah valley and western Virginia, including what became West Virginia. The current church building, the parish's third, was designed by Robert Mills - it was completed in 1828, and is the oldest church building continuously used for religious purposes in the county. It is a contributing building in the local Historic District which predates the National Register of Historic Places, and which has been expanded three times since 1980.

Ann Jennings Johnson was the inaugural First Lady of Maryland and wife of the first non-colonial Governor of Maryland, Thomas Johnson.

References

↑ Middleton, the Rev. Canon Arthur Pierce, Ph.D., Anglican Maryland, 1692-1792, Virginia Beach: The Donning Company, 1992, 5 63-103, ISBN 0-89865-841-1
1 2 3 The History of St. Anne's, St. Anne's Parish, retrieved 2021-06-11
↑ Russell, George, p.8, The Ark and the Dove Adventurers Retrieved Jan 28 2010
↑ Allen, Ethan (1857). Historical Notices of St. Ann's Parish in Ann Arundel County, Maryland: Extending from 1649 to 1857, a Period of 208 Years. J.B. Des Forges.
↑ James Haw, The Patronage Follies: Bennet Allen, John Morton Jordan, and the Fall of Horatio Sharpe in 'Maryland Historical Magazine' Vol 71, no. 2 (Summer 1976) pp. 137-144, available at http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/015100/015176/pdf/msa_sc5458_51_4050.pdf

External links

Official website

38°58′42.4″N76°29′34″W / 38.978444°N 76.49278°W / 38.978444; -76.49278

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Middleton, the Rev. Canon Arthur Pierce, Ph.D., Anglican Maryland, 1692-1792, Virginia Beach: The Donning Company, 1992, 5 63-103, ISBN 0-89865-841-1

[stanns-2] 1 2 3 The History of St. Anne's, St. Anne's Parish, retrieved 2021-06-11

[3] Russell, George, p.8, The Ark and the Dove Adventurers Retrieved Jan 28 2010

[4] Allen, Ethan (1857). Historical Notices of St. Ann's Parish in Ann Arundel County, Maryland: Extending from 1649 to 1857, a Period of 208 Years. J.B. Des Forges.

[5] James Haw, The Patronage Follies: Bennet Allen, John Morton Jordan, and the Fall of Horatio Sharpe in 'Maryland Historical Magazine' Vol 71, no. 2 (Summer 1976) pp. 137-144, available at http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/015100/015176/pdf/msa_sc5458_51_4050.pdf

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]