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.[1] 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.
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.
First Episcopal cathedral in the South (1871)
Thirteen years after its founding, St. Mary's became the first Episcopal cathedral in the American South.[2] While the 1866 Journal of the Proceedings of the Diocese of Tennessee's 34th convention and the national Episcopal Church's 1868 Journal of the General Convention both list St. Mary's as a cathedral church, the official transition from parish to "bishop's church" was January 1, 1871.
At the time, only a handful of Episcopal dioceses had adopted the English-style cathedral system, mostly in the Midwest and the western frontier, where semi-itinerant bishops required more tangible ecclesiastical bases from which to administer sparse, but expansive, new dioceses and missionary territories. While the Episcopal Church was once a part of the Church of England, the American dioceses were slow to designate official cathedrals in keeping with the Protestant or Reformed character of its members. But as the Oxford Movement's "high church" or Roman Catholic-style liturgy began to take root in the United States, Episcopal cathedrals began to appear. With a devoted high churchman as its bishop (Quintard), the Diocese of Tennessee became an early adopter of this trend.
Relief center during 1878 yellow fever epidemic
Memphis suffered periodic epidemics of yellow fever, a mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection (related to dengue fever and Ebola) throughout the 19th century. The worst of the epidemics occurred in the summer of 1878, when 5,150 Memphians died and the fast-growing city lost its charter due to depopulation. Five years earlier, a group of Episcopal nuns from the recently formed Sisters of St. Mary (now the Community of St. Mary) were invited by Bishop Quintard to come to Memphis and take over operation of the St. Mary's School for Girls, now called St. Mary's Episcopal School, which had been relocated to the cathedral site.[3]
When the 1878 epidemic struck, a number of priests and nuns (both Protestant and Catholic), physicians, and even a bordello owner, Annie Cook, stayed behind to tend to the sick and dying, despite the high risk of contracting the disease, which often resulted in a painful death. St. Mary's had become a relief center, staffed by the Sisters of St. Mary and Episcopal priests from various parishes. The nuns' superior, Sister Constance, along with three other nuns and two priests, died at the cathedral from yellow fever. They are known throughout the Anglican Communion as "Constance and Her Companions" or, informally, the "Martyrs of Memphis". Added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981, their feast day (September 9) commemorates their sacrifices.
A traditional Anglican prayer memorializes the martyrs in this way:
We give thee thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the Heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick and the dying, and loved not their own lives, even unto death. Inspire in us a like love and commitment to those in need, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ...
Constance and Her Companions
Sister Constance (née Caroline Louise Darling, born Medway, Massachusetts, 1846), sister superior, headmistress of St. Mary's School for Girls.
Sister Thecla, sacristan of St. Mary's Cathedral and its school chapel, instructor in music and grammar (English and Latin)
The Very Rev. George Harris, dean of the cathedral, survived his bout with yellow fever, as did Sister Hughetta (née Snowden), who immediately succeeded Constance as sister superior and remained head of the order's work in Tennessee until 1925.[4]
"New" cathedral building, 1926
Construction of its present Gothic Revival structure began in 1898 and was completed in 1926, when the parenthetical phrase "(Gailor Memorial)" was appended to the cathedral's formal name in honor of the Rt. Rev. Thomas Frank Gailor, Bishop of Tennessee and president of the National Council of the Episcopal Church.
Response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
King memorial at Westminster Abbey
The second historic/tragic event that St. Mary's Cathedral attempted to mitigate was the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. two miles from the church. The day after King's death, Memphis clergy from many churches and synagogues met at the cathedral. In an impromptu move, Dean William Dimmick (later Bishop of Northern Michigan and co-author of certain rites in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer) took up the cathedral's processional cross and led the assembled ministers down Poplar Avenue to City Hall to petition Mayor Henry C. Loeb to end the labor standoff that King was in town to help negotiate. (The sanitation workers were protesting unsafe conditions, abusive white supervisors, low wages and the city government's refusal to recognize their union). Nearly half of the cathedral's membership left during the following months, many in protest against Dimmick's gesture of racial unity.
Like Constance and her companions, King was added to the Episcopal Church's Calendar of Saints, where he is commemorated on April 4 (or, as an alternate date, January 15). Elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, King is memorialized with a statue over the western entrance of Westminster Abbey, along with nine other 20th-century martyrs.
Sisters' Chapel (on the cathedral close), original New York 1865 Sisters' altar (in the cathedral nave), group grave marker of yellow fever martyrs at Elmwood Cemetery
Public access
Today, a number of St. Mary's Cathedral members (men and women, lay and ordained) are also associates of the Community of St. Mary: people who commit themselves to follow a personal "rule of life".
The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee spanned the entire state until 1982, when it began a partition, which had been in the planning process for about five years, based on the State of Tennessee's three Grand Divisions. The Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee was created in 1982, with St. Mary's retained as its cathedral church. The continuing Diocese of Tennessee was again split in 1985 when the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee was formed.[5]
Prior to then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the statewide diocese actually operated three offices with diocesan bishop John Vander Horst, coadjutor bishop William E. Sanders, and suffragan bishop W. Fred Gates, Jr. stationed in each of the three regions of the state, to serve churches throughout the state more efficiently. Gates maintained offices at the cathedral from 1966 until his 1982 retirement, which occurred shortly before the beginning of the then-new West Tennessee diocese.
Each of the three realigned dioceses retained an important legacy of the old statewide body: West Tennessee had St. Mary's Cathedral; the diocese in Middle Tennessee retained the name "Diocese of Tennessee" and the status as the Episcopal Church's sixteenth diocese; and the East Tennessee diocese welcomed Bishop William Evan Sanders, eighth bishop of Tennessee, as its own first bishop. (Sanders served as the dean of St. Mary's from 1947 until 1961, when he became bishop coadjutor and moved to Knoxville to help manage the statewide diocese's work in East Tennessee.)
Ironically, while St. Mary's was the South's first Episcopal cathedral, Tennessee's other two cathedrals, Christ Church (Nashville) and St. John's in Knoxville are both older parishes, having been organized in 1829 with the original formation of the Diocese of Tennessee.
Historic and contemporary images
Richard Hines, first rector, 1857-1871
Deacon Carol Gardner and Bishop Don Johnson in Easter procession 2007
North transept: This stone is part of one of the columns of the balustrade that surrounded the ancient Pool of Bethesda. Brought from Jerusalem by Bishop Thomas F. Gailor, June 1, 1928.
"Sisters of St. Mary Window"
First cathedral building c. 1898
Sister's Chapel and St. Mary's School for Girls, c. 1900
Henry Yates Satterlee was the first Episcopal Bishop of Washington, serving from 1896 to 1908. He established the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, popularly known as Washington National Cathedral.
The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America that covers roughly Middle Tennessee. A single diocese spanned the entire state until 1982, when the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee was created; the Diocese of Tennessee was again split in 1985 when the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee was formed. It is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, USA is one of 20 dioceses that comprise Province IV of the US Episcopal Church, and is a diocese within the worldwide Anglican Communion. The current bishop is Frank S. Logue, who succeeded Scott Anson Benhase on May 30, 2020, when he was consecrated 11th bishop of Georgia at a service held in Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia.
The Community of St. Mary (CSM) is an Anglican religious order of nuns with independent houses located in Greenwich, New York, Sewanee, Tennessee, Mukwonago, Wisconsin, and also in Malawi and the Philippines.
The Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee is the diocese of the Episcopal Church that geographically coincides with the political region known as the Grand Division of West Tennessee. The geographic range of the Diocese of West Tennessee was originally part of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, which was partitioned into three separate dioceses during 1982–1985. Phoebe A. Roaf is the current bishop of West Tennessee. It is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee on the close of St. Mary's Cathedral.
Charles Todd Quintard was an American physician and clergyman who became the second bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee and the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South.
The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee is the diocese of the Episcopal Church that geographically coincides with the political region known as the Grand Division of East Tennessee. The geographic range of the Diocese of East Tennessee was originally part of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, which was partitioned into three separate dioceses during 1982–1985. It is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Thomas Frank Gailor was the third bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee in the Episcopal Church and served from 1898 to 1935.
Richard Pius Miles, O.P. was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop of the Diocese of Nashville in Tennessee from 1838 until his death in 1860.
Alfred Allen Paul Curtis was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington in Delaware (1886–1896) and as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in Maryland (1897–1908). Curtis had served as an Episcopal priest before converting to Catholicism.
Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal Church is an historic church in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. The church's history dates back to the mid-19th century and the current structure—located in Memphis' Central Gardens Historic Preservation District at 1720 Peabody Avenue—was constructed in 1912.
James Matthew Maxon was the fourth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, serving in that capacity from 1935 to January 1, 1947.
Harriet Starr Cannon was a nun who founded the Sisterhood of St. Mary, one of the first orders of Augustinian nuns in the Anglican Communion and which remains dedicated to social service.
William Arthur Dimmick was bishop of Northern Michigan in The Episcopal Church.
Robert Poland Atkinson was a bishop in The Episcopal Church, serving in the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, until his retirement. Later, he assisted in the Diocese of Virginia.
John Vander Horst was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee from 1961 to 1977.
Theodore Nott Barth was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee from 1953 to 1961.
William Evan Sanders was an American Episcopalian bishop. He was the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee from 1977 to 1985, and first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee from 1985 to 1992. He was consecrated to the episcopate on April 4, 1962.
Francis Ignatius Malone is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who has been serving as bishop for the Diocese of Shreveport in Louisiana since 2019.
James Malone Coleman was second bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee. Coleman was the first bishop of any Tennessee diocese to actually be born inside the state itself.
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