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St.
Paul's as it was in 1863, and its first Rector,
The Rev. C. F. Leffingwell (1856-1860).
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When
a group of Fairfield Episcopalians gathered in April,
1853, to form what became St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church, the nation itself was not yet eighty years
old, and the Civil War was a dark cloud still eight
years distant on the horizon. The oldest photograph
we have of the parish shows a gentleman in a stovepipe
hat and an Abraham Lincoln beard standing beside the
doorway of the church, while two boys lounge in the
doorway and three girls in Gone with the Wind dresses
and bonnets stand at the other side—at a safe
distance from the boys, one suspects. |
In
1853 Fairfield had just lost its status as the seat
of county government to the upstart new thriving commercial
city of Bridgeport. Consequently, a site on the town
green became available, and the founders of the parish
determined to purchase it. So it is that St. Paul’s
was erected on a site previously occupied by two
county jails—one of them torched by the British
in 1779, the other by a prisoner in 1852. If you
go into the cellar
beneath the church, you can still see parts of the
foundation walls of these earlier structures. Perhaps
it was inevitable
that the parish should be named for Saint Paul, who
was himself frequently imprisoned for his faith.
When
the first rector, the Rev. C. S. Leffingwell, then still
a deacon, was called to the parish in 1855, there were
65 men and women on the parish rolls. In an act of great
faith and foresight, they undertook to build the parish
church, laying the cornerstone on September 18, 1855.
Work was completed in 1856, and the church—consisting
then of the nave and chancel, with its distinctive steeple—was
consecrated on May 26.
 The
Rev. Levi B. Stimson 1860-1869 (above)
The Rev. James K. Lombard 1873-1888 (right)
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To
read the church rolls from those early years is to
encounter familiar Fairfield names, some of them
still evident on the parish rolls: Judson, Jennings,
Knapp, Burr, Perry, Mills, Glover, Sturges, Smith,
Sherwood, Sherman. And to read the parish registers
of their baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and
burials is to realize that what William Faulkner
said about the South is also true of the North: “History
isn’t dead; why, it isn’t even past.” The
joys and sorrows that united the community gathered
at St. Paul’s in the 1850’s unite us
today, and hold us in communion with these forebears
in Christ, and with the saints down through the ages.
Junior
Choir 1918
By
1891 the parish had grown enough to require the addition
of a room adjoining the church, where the Sunday
School and The Woman’s Auxiliary could meet.
Between 1928 and 1930, as Fairfield experienced rapid
development, the Rev. Delmar Shepard Markle—who
had become rector at the age of twenty-five, in 1926—led
the parish in a building campaign that produced the
transept where the baptismal font now stands; an
expanded chancel capable of seating a choir and housing
an organ; a chapel adjoining the chancel (now part
of the sacristy); and the present parish hall and
adjoining rooms, which then served as the parish
offices, choir room, and Sunday School rooms.
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View
of the loft after the 1927 renovation. |
Responding
in the next generation to the post-World War II baby
boom, the parish arranged a land exchange with the
town and used the ground on which the Old Academy
had stood (it is now beside our Memorial Garden)
to erect the wing that still houses the parish offices,
the Sunday School classrooms, and the choir rehearsal
room. The service leaflet from the September 19,
1959, dedication service lists, in addition to the
Rector, the Rev. Oliver Carberry, officers and Vestrymen
still well known or well remembered in town: Sidney
Talbot, Edward Harrison, Bradley Morehouse, Albert
Geiger. It also includes some of the first women
to serve on the Vestry: Emily Biscoe, Georgia Judson
(Debbie Garavel’s late mother), and late Dot Kish, life-long member of St. Paul’s .
In the intervening forty-three years, we have used these historic buildings intensively, carrying out the mission of worship and education and community service they were built for, as we have grown to include some four hundred households and around a thousand members. Our major task over the past six years has been to renovate and remodel this physical part of our heritage: creating the gathering space, enclosing the cloister, remodeling the parish hall area and the offices. I believe that the energy we devoted to that task, now so beautifully completed, has been transmuted into revitalized spiritual energy as we continue to use our renewed buildings more efficiently for the purpose for which they were built: sharing the light of Christ in a world that still languishes in darkness.
On May 26, 2006, we will celebrate the 150 th anniversary of the consecration of the original St. Paul ’s. So as we celebrate the past and the goodly heritage our forebears in faith have bequeathed to us, let us embrace the future, confident that the same faith that sustained them in the challenges of their days will be sufficient to take us safely through the unique but not unparalleled challenges of ours.
God
bless you, and everyone dear to you, and this our
long-suffering and wonderful world, in this year
of our Lord, 2006.
Faithfully,
..........Ben
© 2003 St. Paul’s
Episcopal Church, All Rights Reserved.
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