Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana Archives

St. Alban the Martyr Episcopal Mission, Monticello (defunct) and St. Mary's Fellowship (defunct)

The mission of St. Alban the Martyr, Monticello, was organized in 1961 by the Rev. Hugh Edsall, a diocesan missioner who also helped organize four other missions at the same time: Angola, Butler, Rensselaer, and Delphi. Services were only held there twice a month. By 1966, St. Alban the Martyr had become a parochial mission of Trinity Episcopal Church, Logansport. It failed to thrive and closed in the 1990s, the property being sold in 1995.

On 26 June 1994, a fellowship group called St. Mary's formed in Monticello as part of a missionary plan devised by Bishop Gray that also included the creation of the Church of the Resurrection in Wabash and Christ Church in the southern part of South Bend. St. Mary's Fellowship worked with the congregation of St. Peter's in Rensselaer in forming an outreach to senior citizens. Led by the Rev. Susan Jo Blubaugh (the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the diocese), the group remained small but continued to meet persistently and formed as a mission. In 2001, Bishop Little wrote that St. Mary's had only about ten members and as such was the only church in the diocese where "the entire congregation can sit around a single table." At that time it met in a 150-year-old house, donated by parishioner John Freeman. The mission closed in 2007 when it could no longer sustain itself.

Clergy:

Hugh Crichton Edsall, 1961-1963
Thomas Fothergill Stoll, 1964-1966
Robert M. Darrow, 1966-1967
Henry Salem, 1967-1969
Wright R. Johnson, 1969
Susan Jo Blubaugh, 1994-2007

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