Strength and history

• By CAROL ANNE BLITZER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 5, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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INNIS — St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church near Innis has endured wars, floods, hurricanes and a dwindling membership, but it stands today almost unchanged from the way it was when it was consecrated in 1859.

It is a church of firsts — the first church in the diocese of Louisiana to have a woman lay reader, the first church in the diocese outside New Orleans to have a women’s auxiliary and the first building in Pointe Coupee Parish to be named to the National Register of Historic Places.

It is also the oldest Episcopal church building in Louisiana that has not undergone some change in design and is the oldest brick structure in Pointe Coupee Parish.

St. Stephen’s was founded as a mission by the Rev. Frederick Dean, who traveled 25 miles from Morganza with two boys every two weeks beginning in November 1848 in a buggy with a small melodeon organ tied on the back. Dean would arrive at a frame school building in what was then called Williamsport, unload the melodeon, put on his vestments and begin the service.

When music was needed, he would sit down and play the melodeon himself as “he and the boys sang delightfully,” an early parishioner wrote.

According to a history compiled by the Women of the Church in 1989, Dean reported to the Diocesan Convention in April of 1849 that a site had been donated and money raised for a church, that 28 people had been confirmed, and 50 to 60 children were attending Sunday school.

“This end of the parish was settled by the English,” said Velma Davis Hobgood, 86, who was born into the church and remains an active member. “When the Anglican church came, everybody was so happy.”

Construction began in 1850 on the building designed by New York architect J.A. Willis but was halted for floods in 1850 and 1851.
The church parish was originally called St. James, Hobgood said, but Leonidas Polk, pioneer bishop of the Diocese of Louisiana, suggested the name St. Stephen’s for the first Christian martyr.

Polk consecrated the church and the adjoining grounds as a cemetery on May 1, 1859. He later became a general in the Confederate Army and was known as the “fighting bishop of the Confederacy.” He continued to baptize converts and was killed in action in 1864.

Most of the construction items for the building including the bricks, entrance door and pews were made on the grounds with slave labor. The stained-glass windows are from England and were shipped to New York, then to New Orleans and finally to Williamsport, where they were hauled by wagon to the church. In the early years, pews were auctioned to the highest bidder, and families occupied them for generations.

In 1855, Lucy Taylor, of Taylor Plantation, donated a silver Eucharistic service in memory of her husband, Col. William Taylor, a relative of President Zachary Taylor.

War and Reconstruction
The church weathered the Civil War without damage, although it is likely that members were killed in battle. The treasured silver Eucharistic service was hidden by congregants so it would not be taken or damaged during wartime.

Following the war, the church was without a priest, and in an unprecedented move, the bishop of Louisiana gave permission for a woman, Sarah Archer, to serve as lay reader to conduct services from her pew.