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Parish History
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Calvary
Episcopal Church was built during the ministry of the
Reverend Joseph Blount Cheshire in the stormy years
between 1859-1868. The architect, William Percival,
originally proposed that the exterior of the building be
of stucco over brick and that the towers be of wood. In
the final plan the brick exterior was left bare, brick
was used in the towers, buttresses were added, and the
church was lengthened by one bay. |
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A search for
earlier Episcopal endeavor in Edgecombe County would
yield little. The original Church of England parish in
the County, St. Mary’s, was located eight miles
northeast of Tarboro and was fairly large considering the
small size of the community. The parish church was
finished about 1749. Today not a trace remains of St.
Mary’s. Its register was burnt as wastepaper and the
congregation was attracted to a new wooden church in the
newly incorporated Town of Tarboro. This new church (c.
1760) is thought to have been built on land now belonging
to Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church. |
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With the
upheaval of the Revolutionary War, the Church of England
was virtually outlawed. No established church of the
Anglican type filled the vacuum, so church buildings
crumbled and congregations dispersed, either to other
Protestant denominations or to wait out years bereft of
spiritual leadership. Finally in 1784 Samuel Seabury was
consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America,
but not until 1819 was the congregation of Trinity Church
formed in Tarboro by the Reverend John Phillips. His
ministry covered the area between Raleigh and Washington,
N.C., and by 1822 his communicants had dwindled in number
from ten to four. |
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By 1833 the
Church had begun to grow. In this year the Congregation
of Calvary Church incorporated, formed a vestry, and
called a minister. In 1834 Town Lot No. 44 was granted to
the Vestry by a trust left by an eighteenth century
clergyman, the Reverend Henry John Burgess. On this lot,
the southern part of the present Churchyard, a small
frame church was built in 1840. |
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Gray's 1882 map of Tarboro shows
this church, which was then St. Luke's Episcopal Church,
in the southwest corner of Calvary churchyard.
This church was still in use in the late 1920s.
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All who are
thankful for Calvary Church and its beautiful churchyard
should mark well October 1842, for it was then that the
Reverend Joseph Blount Cheshire arrived to head the
Parish. In addition to caring for the spiritual lives of
his congregation, he saw to it that the Churchyard was
fenced in, and then proceeded to plant it full of trees
and shrubs, both native and exotic. |
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The
congregation, small as it was, soon outgrew its church
and as plans to build a larger church jelled, the Vestry
acquired a half-acre lot on the northeast side of the
Churchyard. An adjacent half-acre was given to the church
by a group of prominent citizens, not one of whom was at
the time a baptized churchman. |
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In 1859 the
thirty-three communicants of Calvary Church began work on
the new building with a subscription of $9,000. The plans
called for a church which could accommodate a
congregation of 500. The population of Tarboro in that
year was around 1,200. By 1860 the walls, towers, spires,
roof and floors were done. But then the War Between the
States began, and the windows and doors were boarded up,
to stay that way until 1866. In the brief interim between
the end of the War and the grim repercussions of
Reconstruction, a healthy cotton crop enabled the
parishioners of Calvary Church to finish the Church. It
was consecrated on May 10, 1868. |
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The original
furnishings in the chancel were of wood, carved from
great blocks of oak left from the building of the
Confederate Ram Albemarle. The altar remains in the
Church but the pulpit and lectern have been moved to All
Saints’ Chapel to make way for memorials. |
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In 1972 Calvary
Church received a challenge gift from D. Russell Clark
for a new organ. The members of the parish responded to
this challenge and raised sufficient funds not only to
purchase a new instrument but also to refurbish the
church interior. |
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Larger
memorials include the Cheshire Memorial Parish House and
All Saints’ Chapel, built in 1922. The brick
cloister was built in 1926 as well as the brick wall
surrounding the Churchyard. |
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The Churchyard
itself is of course a memorial to generations of faithful
friends of the Church. To sample the outcome of Dr.
Cheshire’s planting and to see the gravestones in
all their variety, the visitor might, when coming out of
the Church into the cloister, turn east, or right, coming
first to the gable-shaped tombstone of Mary Sumner
Blount. She was the daughter and wife of Revolutionary
War heroes, General Jethro Sumner and General Thomas
Blount, a Representative of North Carolina. With Mrs.
Blount’s trust fund, the congregation bought land
and erected the first frame church, later replaced by the
present church. |
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As you proceed
through the northeast quadrant of the Churchyard, you
will see English yews, live oaks, Japanese magnolia and
American holly, and a number of nineteenth century
tombstones. Against the east wall behind the Church are a
number of poignant infants’ graves, flanked by a
pair of huge Chinese firtrees. At the end of this path,
on the southeast corner, you will find a gnarly old cork
tree, grown by Dr. Cheshire from an acorn sent from
Spain. Set into the wall near the tree are the headstones
from the graves of Lawrence and Sabra Irwin Toole, whose
descendants take up a good percentage of the Churchyard.
These stones date from the eighteenth century and were
moved here from Shiloh to preserve them from the erosion
of the Tar River. |
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Backtrack and
turn west, to pass the grave of William Dorsey Pender,
the youngest general in the Confederate Army, killed in
action at age 29. His grave is arrayed with cannon balls.
Near him lies buried his kinsman, Col. John T. Mercer of
the 21st Georgia Chargers. Towering above these graves
are incense cedars and hemlocks, and near the south door
of the Church are a pair of silver firs, very rare to
this area. |
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Near the
south gate of the Churchyard is the headstone of Col.
William Lawrence Saunders, who collected and compiled the
colonial records of North Carolina and whose courage
under interrogation is recorded by the inscription,
"I decline to answer." Camellias, azaleas,
sweetholly, and boxwood fill the southwest quadrant, and
the main path to the Church is guarded by two ancient
trees, an incense cedar and a live oak. To the south of
the path are the memorials to Joseph Blount Cheshire, and
to his son, the Bishop of North Carolina. Farther down in
the southwest corner are the graves of Bertram Brown, a
beloved rector of the Church, and of Henry Toole Clark,
first president of the William Dorsey Pender Chapter of
the U. D. C. |
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The large
northwest quadrant is filled with elaborate Victorian
memorials, and against the west wall of the cloister is a
large plot of ivy with few markers. This was the
servants’ plot, as attested by several stones with
tender sentiments. In this quadrant are many interesting
trees, Lebanon cedar, Chinese hawthorns, a magnolia
macrophylla which sheds enormous leaves, osage orange,
and ginko, and near All Saints’ Chapel, the
children’s favorite, a buckeye. For
more information, please read the book,
A Goodly Heritage - The Story of Calvary Parish,
by Jaqueline Drane Nash
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