1. BEGINNINGS
On August 30, 1703, twenty-two Kent County
residents signed a petition to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London,
England, requesting the ministry of a priest. In the
following year, the Reverend Thomas Crawford
arrived,
the first of nine S.P.G. missionaries. At the
same time, Colonel Robert French of New Castle
provided a glebe farm of approximately 110 acres
southeast of the present city of Dover. Within three
years, a wooden church had been built on an
adjacent tract.
When Dover was formally laid out by William
Penn's surveyors in 1717, two religious squares
were designated. Meeting House Square, now the
site of the Delaware State Museum, was reserved for
"Dissenters" (Presbyterians) and Church Square,
east of Water Street, was reserved for the Church of
England. The original Church Square was
southwest of the present square, and was relocated
to its present site in 1734. The central portion of
the present Christ Church building was begun on
the new square that same year. ->
The original structure had a simple, rectangular,
"meeting house" design. Approaching the church
from Water Street, one had to walk around to the
south side and enter through a door mid-way in the
south wall. The entrance opened under the long
side of an L-shaped balcony, which ran along the
south and west walls. A raised pulpit stood at the
north wall; a simple communion table was at the
east end. Outside the west wall, the addition in the
1740's of a room (now the vestibule of the church)
provided an office for the vestry.
When Charles Inglis, who later became Rector of
Trinity Church, New York City and then Bishop of
Nova Scotia, arrived in 1759, he found an
unfinished church with no windows or doors.
Inglis, however, soon corrected the situation. Under
his leadership, the parish grew rapidly. Many were
baptized and evangelical outreach ministry was
extended among all segments of the population, free
and slave.
After Inglis left for New York in 1764, his
protégé, Samuel Magaw, took charge of the parish.
While not as famous as Parson Sydenham Thorne of
Milford, he was sympathetic to the Revolutionary
cause. He was also friendly to the growing
Methodist Societies, administering the sacraments
to their members and on one occasion rescuing
Frances Asbury, co-founder of American
Methodism, from a mob on the Dover Green.
Among his notable parishioners was Caesar
Rodney, who served on the vestry. During Magaw's
tenure, the parish received several major gifts which
still survive. Benjamin Wynkoop of Philadelphia
presented a handsome lectern Bible, and his sister,
Esther Wynkoop of Dover, presented a silver chalice
and paten, which are still used occasionally in
parish services. Back to Top
2. A NEW NATION
The post-Revolutionary period was a time of
trouble for the Episcopal Church throughout the
newly independent country, a new church
established without the support of most Church of
England clergy and many lay people. Some had left
by preference; others had been driven out by force.
The withdrawal of S.P.G. support coupled with the
evacuation of most clergy left Delaware's parishes
with few means and little spiritual leadership.
These factors led to the most depressed period in
the history of Christ Church, Dover, characterized
by general inactivity and very short clergy tenure.
From 1833 to 1859, the parish had no deputies at
Diocesan Conventions. The church building and church
yard were neglected. ->
When the first Bishop
of Delaware, Alfred Lee, was invited to Christ
Church in the 1840's, he wrote that he had heard
that the church had become a refuge for snakes and
other animals. As a result, he hoped that services
could be held at the State House or some other
appropriate building.
However, as the nation moved toward civil war,
Christ Church began to revive. In the mid 1840's,
Mary Brereton Ridgely had the Wynkoop
communion silver repaired, as it had been damaged
in an early nineteenth-century fire which had
destroyed many valuable parish records. Under
Bishop Lee's inspiration, the parish began to regain
its former position in Dover and the Diocese. Back to Top
3. CIVIL WAR
In 1860, a major renovation of the building was
undertaken, including new pews and moving the
door to the west wall. Mrs. Charles I. (Ann
Ridgely) du Pont, who had grown up in the parish,
provided generous support, which was carried out
by her daughter, Mrs. Eugene (Amelia Elizabeth)
du Pont. The combined efforts of the bishop, the
parish, and the friends of the parish culminated on
Ascension Day, 1860, when the church was
formally reconsecrated.
The post-Civil War period was one of expansion
in the church. Christ Church was one of several
downstate parishes to acquire the architectural
marks of the Oxford Movement.
(Among an influential group of Oxford clergy in England
from 1833 to the mid-1840s, besides advocating a return to Roman
worship practices, there was a revival of interest in church
architecture resulting in support for the ideas of a young
Roman Catholic architect, Augustus Pugin, for whom Gothic
was the sole appropriate style of Church architecture.) ->
In Christ Church interesting neo-gothic
windows replaced the earlier clear glass; a shallow
neo-gothic chancel was added to the east
end. In 1876 a bell tower was built over the vestry,
and a bell was purchased the following year.
4. MODERN TIMES
Some of the neo-Gothic details have since been removed.
However, against the back-
ground of a simple eighteenth-century meeting house,
nineteenth-century windows remind the worshiper
of the past. One early window recalls the common
literal commitment to the Second Commandment
once shared by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.
There is no anthropomorphic or human representation
except what was then a very daring
symbol of the Holy Spirit in form of a dove.
Another early window recalls some of the humor of
the medieval period in design of church windows.
The subject is the feeding of the five thousand. ->
In traditional fashion it is a memorial to a substantial
citizen, James Washington Robbins, the founder of
the Richardson and Robbins Company, a food
processing plant and Dover's first major modern
industry. The windows at the west end of the nave
are in the style of Louis Tiffany.
In the early twentieth century, Christ Church was
expanded further with a new, larger sanctuary plus
choir, other auxiliary areas for the church building,
and the present church yard wall and lych gate.
The vestry became the church vestibule.
After World War II, William H. Thompson, a
Philadelphia architect and a son of a former rector,
supervised the building of the present parish house
and a major remodeling of the church. Important
gifts in memory of the Richardson, Ridgely, and
Wolcott families helped provide the current interior
furnishings, the fine organ, and expanded seating.
In the early 1970's the work was concluded with
significant but largely invisible upgrading of the
fabric of the church. 2002 saw a complete
refurbishment of the parish house with special
attention to modern building codes.
Thomas Crawford
Jacob Henderson
George Frazer
Arthur Ussher
Theophilus Morris
Thomas Bluett
Hugh Neill
Charles Inglis*
Samuel Magaw
Samuel Roe
George Dashiell
Walter C. Gardner
Henry Judah
C.F. Cruse
Robert Piggott
Daniel Higbee
H.T. McCallum
S.T. Carpenter
Marshall B. Smith
John Crockar White
T. Gardner Littell
Lucius Sweetland
Edward H. True
James W. Hoskins
Samuel McElwee
Lewis W. Gibson
George M. Bond
Henry Olmstead
Benjamin F. Thompson
Paul A. Kellogg**
G.P. Mellick Belshaw***
Gregory M. Howe
Driss Knickerbocker
Celeste O. Cox
**Became Bishop of Dominican Republic
***Became Bishop of NJ
Today at Christ Church we celebrate our roots in
the rich ground of the historic past. Yet our chief
concern today is to meet the challenge and
opportunity of preaching the gospel and serving
God's people in ways that are relevant to life in the
21st century.
As a parish we are making significant strides in
living out our baptismal mission --
to proclaim by
word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our
neighbors as ourselves; and to strive for justice and
peace among all people, respecting the dignity of
every human being -- and in progress toward the
vision we have for our future, to grow spiritually
and in numbers.
Our hope is to reach out to people in Greater
Dover who do not yet know about Christian
community as it is lived the Episcopal way. We
draw strength from the past in order to move into
the future that awaits us, in Christ.
