CHRIST CHURCH FREDERICA

 

The church traces its origin to General James Oglethorpe’s landing with the first English settlers on St. Simons Island on February 22, 1736. After breakfast, a group assembled and joined in reading the Litany with The Rev. Benjamin Ingham. General Oglethorpe had established the first English colony in Savannah and settled this second colony at Frederica to protect the new colony of Savannah from the Spanish threat in Florida.

Three outstanding religious leaders of the 18th century were associated with the establishment of the church on St. Simons Island. The Rev. Charles Wesley, MA, entered his ministry at Frederica on March 9, 1736, two weeks after the landing of the first settlers. He served as Chaplain to General Oglethorpe and as Secretary for Indian affairs. Services were also conducted by The Rev. John Wesley, The Rev. George Whitefield and other clergy appointed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. These ministers were ordained clergymen of the Church of England by whom the Episcopal Church in the United States was planted and nurtured. After the return of the Wesleys to England, the evangelical revival eventuated in the origin of the Methodist Church in which John Wesley had the principal role.

In 1752, the Trustees surrendered their Charter to the King, and Georgia became a Royal Colony. In 1758, the Province was divided into parishes, and Frederica and St. Simons were designated as St. James Parish.

Following the Revolutionary War, the descendants of early settlers petitioned for a charter and were incorporated by an act of the State Legislature on December 22, 1808, as "The Episcopal Church in the Town of Frederica," called Christ Church. Land from the town of Frederica was also "Given, Granted and Secured To and For the Use and Benefit of the Said Episcopal Church."

The first church on the present location was erected in 1820, and the congregation worshiped in it until the outbreak of the Civil War. The Reverend Edmund Matthews, DD, who became rector in 1810, was one of three clergymen composing the Primary Convention for the organization of the Diocese of Georgia in 1823.

The Rev. Anson Green Phelps Dodge, Jr., rebuilt the church following its destruction during the Civil War as a memorial to his first wife, Ellen. The church was consecrated on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1886 by the Rt. Rev. J. W. Beckwith, DD, Bishop of Georgia. In addition to establishing an endowment for Christ Church, Frederica, Mr. Dodge built and endowed the Anson Dodge Home for Boys (closed in 1956), and established the Georgia Missions Fund for the support of missionaries and teachers in certain designated counties of the Diocese. This legacy still provides college scholarships for young men in the Diocese of Georgia.

The present church building is cruciform in design with a trussed Gothic roof. Stained glass windows, given as memorials, commemorate events in the life of Christ and the early history of the church on St. Simons Island. The Font was given to the church by the Sunday School of St. Thomas Church, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1884. Part of the Credence Table and an inset in the present altar are from the altar of the 1820 church.

In the surrounding churchyard are buried former rectors of the church, early settlers and their families, people who lived in the plantation era and island residents and church members from the early days of the 19th century to the present. Georgia’s first State Historian, Lucian Lamar Knight, is buried here. The oldest gravestone that has been discovered dates from 1803.

Sixteen rectors have served the parish since its beginning, ten of them since the building of the new church in 1884: The Rev. Dodge, The Rev. D. Watson Winn, The Rev. Dr. Charles Lee, The Rev. Joseph Walker, The Rev. Wiltshire W. Williams, The Rev. Lawrence M. Fenwick, The Rev. Dr. Edwin Bethea, The Rev. Dr. Junius J.Martin, The Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald and The Rev. Douglas Renegar. Serving for brief periods were The Rev. J. Sullivan Bond as Vicar and The Rev. Frederick Cousins, superintendent of the Anson Dodge Home for Boys, as supply priest.

The Harrington School

The last African-American school on St. Simons Island, the Harrington School represents the most viable and valuable venue to interpret the Gullah/Geechee heritage of St. Simons Island. The building formerly served as the Harrington Grade School from the 1920s until its desegregation in the 1960s, when it was converted to a daycare facility and served as such until the 1970s.

In 2004, Glynn County and the St. Simons Land Trust, Inc. acquired ownership of a tract of real estate, containing approximately 12 acres of land, known as the Harrington Tract and located on South Harrington Road on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The Harrington Tract includes a parcel of land containing approximately 1.7 acres, on which is located the last remaining African American school house on St. Simons Island.

The Harrington Tract was acquired by the Land Trust and the County pursuant to the Georgia Greenspace laws and the Glynn County Greenspace program. Following that acquisition, the County and the Land Trust executed and recorded various documents which restricted the Harrington Tract for the use of the public.

After several unsuccessful attempts, over several years, to find funding for the restoration of the Schoolhouse, the Land Trust determined in late 2009 that the building was so deteriorated that it was probably beyond the point that restoration was possible. The Land Trust concluded that its best course of action would be to disassemble the Schoolhouse and erect a “ghost structure” with suitable signage memorializing the site.

In early 2010, members of the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition and others interested in historic preservation decided to seek a second opinion regarding the physical condition of the Schoolhouse building. They consulted with Cullen Chambers, who is the Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Historic Preservation Advisory Council of the Coastal Regional Commission. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Chambers and his staff inspected the Schoolhouse and determined that the building was structurally sound and worthy of preservation and restoration.

Once this determination was made, renewed enthusiasm for the restoration of the Schoolhouse began to build. The restoration process of preserving the Harrington School began in 2011 and is now complete.

[Sources: The Georgia Trust; The Society for Georgia Archeology - Rawson Gordon]

Located at South Herrington at Bennies Red Barn, St. Simons Island, GA 31522