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• 1 media/St-Andrews-panoramic exterior.jpg 2019-07-25T20:29:09-07:00 St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Valparaiso 71 image_header 2024-07-27T13:20:19-07:00 The Episcopal Church in Porter County has its roots in several small earlier congregations established in Valparaiso. On the Feast of the Epiphany 1861, an Episcopal missionary, the Rev. Edward P. Wright, rector of Trinity Michigan City, conducted the town's first Episcopal service in a rented hall. He maintained fortnightly services, and Bishop George Upfold organized this informal group into a congregation on 2 June 1861 as the Church of the Holy Communion. About 40 persons, including six communicants, gathered at these early services. Upfold expressed his hope that a church would take root here and at Warsaw, since both towns were on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad line.
  
  At the start of the Civil War progressed, the congregation seemed initially strong. When Bishop Upfold made his visitation February 1861, he reported to his wife finding a "deep interest in church matters." He celebrated communion for nineteen communicants, confirmed three, and preached to an overflowing house in a rented room. However, by 1862, the departure of Wright from his post in Michigan City and the removal of a few key members of the congregation diminished the church's initial progress. Several deaths and other changes ended the fledgling congregation, and it was formally terminated by the Diocesan Council. Two prominent members, John C. Feebles, an attorney, and John C. Thompson, a merchant, along with their wives, had supported the congregation.
  
  In 1863, a schism occurred among a group of German Lutherans in Valparaiso. Led by their pastor, the Rev. William Jahn, the congregation of more than 400 members left the Lutheran Church and formed German St. John's Episcopal Church, affiliating with the Episcopal Diocese of Indiana. Jahn, a native of Holstein, Germany, held worship services in German for 450 new members (including 230 communicants) in space rented from Valparaiso University. Bishop Upfold ordained him to both the diaconate and priesthood in two separate services in February 1864. The event was so novel that the editors of a national church publication, The Church Monthly, took note. Writing in April 1864, they observed: "Seeking our Communion as a refuge from rationalism and from an earnest conviction of its conformity with Scripture and primitive usage, we trust these new converts to Episcopacy from the land of Luther may be the earnest of a far greater ingathering." They added that the move "cannot fail of awakening a wide interest both in our own Church and in the Lutheran body."
  
  Bishop Upfold made a second visitation in March 1864 to an assembly of between 300 and 400, and he reported on the unusual nature of the service: "The services today have been unique. Mr. Jahn read the morning prayer in German. I read the Communion in English except the Epistle and Gospel which I request him to read in German. Then I made brief remarks to the congregation, most of whom understand English more or less, expressing my gratification in meeting them in my official relation - and explaining to them particularly the usage of the Church and the reasons for wearing a surplice, a new thing to the people, which I advised Mr. Jahn to wear at once as delay would not help the matter. The surplice, a very handsome one, is a present from the ladies of St. John's Lafayette, which I brought with me. Mr. Jahn said three or four only did not like it, but the great majority were pleased after my explanation. He preached in German, and I have seldom heard a more earnest, energetic preacher, and apparently, eloquence. I could not understand a word of course. I confirmed seven young persons all he thought sufficiently instructed to receive the rite, all of them came to the communion afterward."

  After a momentous and unusual beginning, Jahn went west in September 1864 in order to visit potential donors and obtain funds for a church building. On the way he was shot in a guerilla raid while riding on the Northern Missouri Railroad. Bishop Upfold observed in his Council address in 1865 that the death "has filled my heart with grief and sadness, and with serious apprehension for the success of the enterprise so auspiciously begun..."
  
  Efforts for a church continued in the wake of this tragedy, but Jahn's death had dealt it a severe blow. A new German-speaking missionary from Missouri, the Rev. Ignatius Koch, assumed leadership of German St. John's and reported to the diocesan convention that he had worked with both Lutherans and Episcopalians and had raised $540 for a church. He asked the diocese for $8,000 more to complete a church building. He noted in his report, "I visited all the Germans of Valparaiso and some in the country, introducing myself as their pastor to whose jurisdiction they belong through their Baptism, and invited them kindly to come forward for the union."
  
  The money was not forthcoming, however, and the church failed to grow. Koch left for Pennsylvania, where he died in 1872. Bishop Coadjutor Joseph Talbot visited Valparaiso during the winter of 1866-67 and deemed it inadvisable to reorganize the congregation. By 1867, German St. John's had lost its affiliation with the diocese.
  
  According to parishioner Claribel Dodd Smith, whose family moved from New England to Porter County, Episcopal services were held in private homes in Valparaiso in the 1890s. Whether members from the earlier congregations attended is not clear. Those services conducted in the home of James Wilson included use of a piano box for an altar and a gilded wooden cross. The missionary priest-in-charge at that time, the Irish-born Rev. George Moore of Momence, Illinois, would pick up worshipers in his sleigh for winter services at the home of Mrs. J. Seymour Wilcox. Services were also held in larger venues in the 1890s, including Moltz’s jewelry store across from the Courthouse and at a later period above Wark's Hardware Store, but the congregation remained officially unorganized.

  By 1900, this group of Episcopalians had grown, and the Annual Council of the new Diocese of Michigan City granted the congregation mission status under the name of St.  Andrew’s, apparently after St. Andrew's Church in Chicago where two of its prominent members, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Parker, had been members. A church had the status of mission church if it depended on the diocese for some part of its funding. 
  
  According to a 1912 history of Porter County, Bishop John Hazen White was determined to plant a more permanent church in Valparaiso and enlisted the help of several lay leaders, including Charles H. Parker, J. Seymour Wilcox, A. W. Barnhart, M. A. Snider, J. C. Rock, and others in reorganizing the mission in a rented hall. The Rev. Legh W. Applegate became its first resident priest.
  
  In 1902, under Applegate's leadership, the congregation built a wood frame church at 104 Erie Street in downtown Valparaiso for about $25,000, using a 50-year-old house as the base, which it moved to the site. It was 32 by 64 feet in size with a twelve foot square tower, dedicated on 6 July 1902. A major renovation in 1916 led to the removal of the tower's third story and changing the entrance from Franklin to Erie Street. A stained glass window was placed where the old entrance had been. Miss Kees was the first organist with a choir of 22 people.

  Applegate moved on to establish Christ Church in Gary in 1907. A succession of rectors of short tenure followed, none of them staying long enough to strengthen the congregation. The Rev. Walter B. Williamson, who served from 1912 to 1916, added a stucco exterior finish and remodeled the rectory at a cost of $5,000. He also reached out to found a new mission at Hobart. St. Andrew's floundered financially, and in 1917, the Rev. Clinton Cromwell placed the mission under the spiritual care of Bishop White.
  
  During the Great Depression, the task of finding permanent leadership for the mission proved challenging for White's successor, Bishop Campbell Gray. In 1939, a group of monks led by Dom Paul Severance from the Order of St. Benedict arrived from training in England and at Gray's urging, settled in a house in Valparaiso. Gray assigned them to serve St. Andrew’s as well as other parishes, and their work endeared them to the diocese. They left in 1946 when they built their own monastery in Three Rivers, Michigan. The diocese was enriched by having been the first home of the American Anglican Benedictines. During their tenure, the vicarage was renamed St. Gregory's House.
  
  In 1946, the Rev. Samuel H. N. Elliott, a former Army chaplain of the 46th Quartermaster Group, arrived in Valparaiso and questioned why St. Andrew's had remained a mission for 46 years. He began an extensive renovation of the 1902 church, locating eight small stained glass windows being discarded by another church and purchased them for $100 each. Although members of the parish expressed initial dismay at the cost, they managed to raise the money for the installation. Several families contributed funds, as did the local Greek community and a group of local veterans. By 1948, the work had been completed and the windows installed. Elliott and a small group of parishioners did much of the restoration work themselves. The windows were later moved again and installed in the third church building in 2005. In 1950 under Elliott's leadership, the church marked its 50th anniversary, and a large celebration was held on St. Andrew’s Day (November 30).
  
  Elliott and a group of parishioners began the work of establishing a new mission in nearby Hobart, but Elliott gave up those duties in 1948. Humbled by the accomplishment of spearheading a major renovation of St. Andrew's, he invited the diocese to hold its diocesan convention there in 1949, the first time a convention had been held in a mission church. By 1951, Elliott had become ill with alcoholism, and Bishop Mallett removed him from the rectorship. He later became sober and was an active member of the Recovered Alcoholic Clergy Association (RACA, serving a mission church in Salem, Illinois.
  
  The Rev. Forrest B. Clark, a beloved rector of long tenure, arrived in February 1954 as priest-in-charge. A native of Crawford, Texas, he had trained for the priesthood at Seabury-Western and Nashotah House. He was soon after diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to recover his health at the veteran's hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Bishop Mallett arranged for Father Langendorff to take charge of services until Clark could return, but he appears to have been worth the wait. Within two years of his arrival the membership grew 30 percent. Under his leadership the church was able to advance from mission to parish status in 1960 and become self-supporting. The old vicarage was refurbished into classrooms for what was called the Monday School. Clark also led the church in purchasing a property on Bull's Eye Lake Road for a possible future site of the church. Suffering from depression, Clark retired in 1969, but despite ill health, he agreed to serve again as a non-stipendiary priest from 1973 to 1977, seeing the congregation through a difficult time. His widow, Canon Kitty Clark, remained involved with St. Andrew’s many years afterward. In 1980, Bishop Sheridan dedicated the Forrest B. Clark Memorial Center at 104 Erie Street, which provided space for the church school and offices.
  
  The Rev. Colin Mainer succeeded Clark, serving from 1968 to 1973. Mainer, a bachelor, proved unpopular, and some parishioners withdrew their funding for the church in protest to his leadership style. The financial crisis led the church to revert again to mission status, and after several years of difficulty, Bishop William Sheridan removed Mainer as rector, leading to Clark's return as a non-stipendiary supply priest. During this time some much-needed maintenance occurred with the replacement of badly-deteriorated window frames. The roof was replaced, and St. Gregory's House was demolished.
  
  The Rev. Ross Mack succeeded Clark and served from 1977 to 1984. Mack began a long process of repairing old St. Andrew’s and oversaw the building of the attached Parish Center. In 1981, the Forrest B. Clark Center was constructed at a cost of $110,000, and in 1984, the mortgage on the church was burned. Mack resigned in 1984, but he later became a member of the congregation after retirement and continued to serve as a supply priest.
  
  The Rev. Robert Bramlett followed Mack as rector in 1985 and served until 1990. During his tenure the windows underwent further restoration and the undercroft was extensively repaired.

  Fr. Patrick Ormos (1991-2007) succeeded Bramlett and led the parish during a period of growth. During his tenure the congregation outgrew the church on Erie Street and moved to a new location on Bullseye Lake Road in 2005. That same year the parish purchased an 1889 Hook & Hastings organ, completely refurbished, that had formerly been installed in a Baptist church in Massachusetts. In 2010, the church called the Rev. Roger Bower as rector, and he served until 2022.
  
  Adapted from St. Andrew's website: https://standrewsvalpo.org/who-we-are/history/
  
  Parish Register 1893-1947
  Burials, 1899-2022
  Baptisms, 1893-1996
  
  Clergy: 
  
  Edward Purdon Wright, 1861-1862
  William Jahn, 1864
  Ignatius Koch, 1865-1866
  George Moore, 1898-1899
  Legh Wilson Applegate, 1902-1907
  Marshall Mallory Day, 1908-1910
  Robert Carpenter Ten Broeck, 1910-1911
  Walter Blake Williamson, 1912-1915
  Clinton Bradshaw Cromwell, 1916-1920
  George Taylor Griffith, 1920-1925
  Arthur G. Worger-Slade, 1925-1927
  Alexander Eberhardt Pflaum, 1928-1933
  Harry Kroll Hemkey, 1933-1935
  Dom Paul Severance, 1939-1945
  Harold McLemore, 1945-1946
  Samuel Hanna Norman Elliott, 1946-1951
  Forrest B. Clark, 1954-1969, 1974-1976
  John Graham Colin Mainer, 1968-1973
  Ross Mack, 1977-1984
  Robert G. Bramlett, 1985-1990
  C. Patrick Ormos, 1991-2007
  Roger Bower, 2010-2022
  Catherine Carpenter, 2022-
  
  Adapted from St. Andrew's website https://standrewsvalpo.org/who-we-are/history/
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• 1 media/Unidentified group of woman at Trinity, 1920s.jpg 2020-08-30T14:29:30-07:00 Women's Auxiliary - Episcopal Church Women 13 image_header 2022-10-05T15:27:56-07:00 Women have played an important role from the beginning of the Episcopal Church, though they were excluded by canon law for much of its early history from serving with men in any formal leadership role. That included serving on vestries or representing parishes at annual convocations. Accordingly, women developed separate organizations within individual parishes, raising money for buildings and rectories, socializing, and promoting other charitable work. They cared for vestments and altar linens through the formation of altar guilds, and, until some bishops outlawed them, they hosted community fairs where they sold food and knitted articles they had produced, raising at times substantial funds that they kept separate from general parish funds.
  
  After the Civil War, church women sought to organize their efforts more formally at the national level. The result was the Women's Auxiliary, founded nationally by the General Convention of the Church in 1871 in Baltimore. Its founding members intended it as both a social and missionary outlet for women's service at a time when the overall church structure remained highly patriarchal. Chapters of the Women's Auxiliary were founded both in parishes and at the diocesan level. These chapters raised money for a variety of causes, including education, health, child protection, and alleviation of poverty, both at home and abroad. Many members worked actively for women's suffrage, though it was not officially part of the Auxiliary's mission. These women were also involved in many other civic organizations, promoting parks, playgrounds, boulevards, and other city beautification efforts.
  
  The Diocese of Northern Indiana chapter of the Women's Auxiliary traces its origin to 1904 and continues its work under a different name into the twenty-first century. All women canonically resident in the diocese are eligible for membership. Its ministries include the Bishop's Emergency Discretionary Fund, the Memorial Fund (which funds scholarships), the Church Periodical Club, Episcopal Relief and Development, and the United Thank Offering. The latter organization encouraged church members to embrace and deepen a personal daily discipline of gratitude, to give thanks daily to God in prayer, and to offer financial contributions for each blessing using a UTO blue box. All of the raised funds then went to support the mission and ministry of the church within the Anglican Communion.
  
  In 1963, the Auxiliary was renamed the Episcopal Church Women or E.C.W. The organization remained extremely popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s as both a social and a service organization. Every parish in the diocese had an active chapter and continued to send representatives to diocesan-level events. Women cooked, hosted parish dinners, made a variety of crafts, published cookbooks, and raised money for a variety of missionary and outreach causes.
  
  Changes in American society in the 1960s brought pressure on Episcopal Church leaders to change its long-standing patriarchal rules and allow women a greater participatory role in church governance. In some dioceses, this change occurred more quickly than in others. At some length the canons of the Diocese of Northern Indiana were amended by convention in 1967, allowing women to serve as diocesan and parish officers. Women began serving on vestries, but the change occurred gradually. Ann Washington Bromley became one of the first woman to serve on a vestry in 1971 at St. Augustine's in Gary, followed soon after by Alice Bird of Trinity, Fort Wayne. Nancy Moody of Gethsemane Church in Marion served as a representative to the General Convention in 1969.
  
  By the 1980s, membership in the E.C.W. began to evolve. Many women had begun to enter the workforce in the 1970s and had less time for church club activities during the week. Many of those who remained active in E.C.W. were often of an earlier generation who had not worked outside the home. In some parishes, the E.C.W. and other social guilds died out, while in others their work continues, albeit on a much smaller scale than in its heyday. Traditional gender roles in other areas have blurred. In some parishes, men now play an active role with women on altar guilds.
  
  A variety of other organizations for women and girls existed during the first century of the diocese. A popular organization in some parishes is the Daughters of the King, whose members pledge to follow Jesus as Lord of their lives and devote themselves to prayer, service, and evangelism. Membership also includes women in the ELCA Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Other typical organizations were guilds, often named for some female saint, which usually had a social or missionary purpose.
  
  Many other women's organizations are now largely defunct in the diocese. The Girls' Friendly Society, which became popular in the 1920s, had originated in England and sought to empower girls and young women aged 5 to 25 by "encouraging them to develop their full potential through programs that provide training, confidence building, and other educational opportunities." Many parishes had their own chapters. The Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, a non-denominational organization, provided a service and fellowship opportunity for youths of both sexes. The Church Service or Social Service League and the Church Periodical Club, both of which were later incorporated into E.C.W., offered another opportunity for missionary work. The Church School Service League provided classes on a variety of topics to its members. The St. Barnabas Guild for Nurses was a non-denominational Christian organization for nurses in the Church. Between 1919 and 1930, the diocese produced printed reports of these groups in combined form, including reports from many individual parishes.
  
  At the diocesan level these organizations participated in provincial conventions held annually in different cities. Northern Indiana belonged initially to the Synod of the Mid-West, which was later further divided into smaller provinces, including Province V. Published minutes of these gatherings reflected a wider effort to promote the ministry of the Church to larger regions of the country where it had little representation.
  
  Bibliography
  
  Mary S. Donovan, A Different Call: Women's Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850-1920  (Connecticut: Morehouse Publishing, 1986).
  
  Diocese of Northern Indiana, Church Service League Annual Reports, 1924-1930.