There’s a small brown notebook, more like a composition book with a grocery-sack-paper cover, that usually lives in the church safe deposit box for safekeeping. Its handwritten cover says:
Register
St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church
Commencing May 7th 1840
Including Births, Marriages
And Burials, etc
Written by the
Reverend Robert B. Croes
Rector from Sept 25th 1842
To Sept 1845June 1850
Did the church commence on May 7, 1840—or just the record in this notebook? And why did the fledgling congregation choose to name themselves after St. Stephen, the church’s first deacon? Click here to download Rev. Mary’s PDF meditation about who we were then and who we are now…