Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana Archives

Trinity Episcopal Mission, Kendallville (defunct)

In July 1890, the first Episcopal service in Kendallville, Noble County, was conducted in the Presbyterian Church by Bishop David Buel Knickerbacker and William Mitchell, a native of Kendallville, a Harvard graduate, and a candidate for Holy Orders. At the time Knickerbacker gave communion to all baptized Christians in attendance, "a act," said a history, "which as much as anything also helped to create a good and healthy impression towards the Church and the Prayer Book."

After ordination as a deacon, Mitchell returned in 1891 and held services in the Opera House, which were reportedly well attended. He then led the formal organization of the mission on 4 September 1892. Bishop Knickerbacker returned that year and confirmed six. That same year Mitchell's father, John Mitchell, a prominent citizen in town, gave a lot east of the family homestead on Diamond Street near Main for the church. It allowed the congregation to break ground and lay the cornerstone. The little church was finished in 1893. After Mitchell left for Terre Haute, a series of missionaries and lay readers assumed charge of both Kendallville and Emmanuel Episcopal Mission in Garrett. Two extant parish registers contain records only from 1890 to 1899 and 1907 to 1938, but there is evidence that services continued until 1941. For many years the congregation was led by its senior warden and lay reader, Archie Campbell, who had married Kate Mitchell, William Mitchell's sister. Campbell was reputedly one of the wealthiest men in Noble County, a local merchant, and a generous benefactor of the poor. He died in 1934.

Over time, the parish lost members to other larger mainline Protestant denominations. A few stalwart members remained, but few others were willing to travel for services in Kendallville when there were more successful churches of other denominations available. In 1947, the Rev. George B. Wood of Trinity Fort Wayne wrote to Bishop Mallett to report that the records of the church and a few holy vessels had been deposited with him. The building was by then in derelict condition with broken windows and only a broken organ inside. A year later, the bishop received a second report that the windows had been boarded up. The mission property was sold in 1951.

Clergy:

William Mitchell, 1890-1893
Charles Tullidge Stout, 1894-1895
John Edwin Carpenter, 1896-1898
Edward E. St. John (lay reader), 1898
Legh Wilson Applegate, 1900-1902
John Newton Rippey, 1902-1903
William Burbury Magnan, 1903-1906
Hobart Louis Marvin, 1906-1910
Herbert A. Wilson, 1910
Cleon E. Bigler, 1913-1914
A. M. Judd, 1914-1915
Gomer David Griffiths, 1916
Charles A. Reah, 1917
Duncan Weeks, 1920-1924
Albert Linnell Schrock, 1924-1935
Clarence Parker, 1939
Dom Leo Kenneth Douglas Patterson, 1941-1945

Clergy Book, Service Register, and Parish Register, 1890-1904

Parish Register, 1907-1938

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