My Church, and Memories: They Do Come Again
By Eva Gasperich
From the Evening Capital
Tuesday, September 9, 1958
Dcn. David and I were rummaging through the water closet the other day and found a poster board with an old article about St. Paul’s Chapel that ran in the Evening Capital on Tuesday, September 9, 1958 by a woman named Eva Gasperich. We thought it was so neat to have a firsthand account of some of the history at St. Paul’s and wanted to share it with you. Here it is:
In the rugged days of early Anne Arundel, people went to unheated churches and worshipped God on their knees on cold, bare floors. They read the Holy Bible daily, studied their church catechism and prayed out loud in the family circle night and morning.
In Anne Arundel county St. Anne’s in Annapolis was the center of the Protestant Episcopal faith. But the rough dirt roads caused country people great hardship to attend. in order to be on time for Morning Prayer, they had to drive to Annapolis with horse and carriage the day before, and put up over night. to alleviate this situation, sometime in 1730, the Episcopal Diocese had a chapel erected in the North Severn River area on the old Chesterfield Road and called it the Chapel of Ease.
For 77 years hereafter this chapel served the simple needs of the few country Episcopalians, scattered through Severn Parish. Then on a warm Whitsunday a great wind-storm swept in from South River to the Severn and destroyed the Chapel of Ease. A tablet, erected by the Daughters of the Revolution, now marks this old site.
Meanwhile, Francis Asbury, the famous circuit rider who followed the Wesleyan movement from the Episcopal Church, and was the first Methodist Bishop in America, had established special headquarters at Brooksy’s Point on the Severn River, called Asbury’s Station. This also is marked by the D.A.R.
When the Chapel of Ease blew down, one William Thomas Turner, with an inspiration for Christian unity, offered a piece of his property called Warfield’s Plains at Severn Cross Roads for a community church to be jointly built and shared by Methodists and Episcopalians. The sects were financially hard pressed and few in numbers in those days.
This plan was gratefully accepted. The elders met and planned. Every man who could handle a saw and an axe came forward to work. What financial resources the two denominations could muster were pledged.
When the first church opening was held, both denominations took part. The sermon of the day is attributed to Francis Asbury.
It was a stupendous event for many sociable helpful years afterwards Methodists and Episcopalians held alternate services in this building. It was called Old Cross Roads Church. Ivy-covered brick Baldwin Memorial stands there now facing on the General’s Highway.
As times advanced and the population increased, the Episcopalians, let by Basil Hall, who lived nearby, separated from Old Cross Roads Church. Three miles further down on Chesterfield road the Episcopal element built a brick church fired from a clay field opposite the side and named it St. Stephens. This was sometime in 1843.
Severn Parish was then formally separated from St. Anne’s. The Methodists bought out the Episcopal interests in Old Cross Roads. The proceeds were set aside for a chapel fund.
At Crownsville Station of the Annapolis and Elkridge steam railroad, there was a corral in a grove where people taking the train tied their horses. This lot was owned by two spinster gentlewomen named Brown. They were weary of travelling over awful roads in a creaking carriage either to St. Anne’s or St. Stephen’s and offered the old corral to Severn Parish upon which to build a mission chapel. With the funds from the sale of Episcopal interests in Old Cross Roads Church, and pledges from the country faithful, St. Paul’s Chapel was build in the livestock grove at Crownsville in 1850, when Maryland was sorely troubled by the War Between the States.
It was a small frame structure, but Gothic-styled, with steeple and bell and it was hand-hewed, with 16 pitch-pine pews, including four in the slave gallery at the rear. On either side of the steps to the front vestibule, there were smooth chestnut stumps placed where ladies on horseback might alight and mount with ease at the church entrance. Hitching rings were attached to the trees. At the rear of the church was a small carriage shed for the minister’s convenience. Attached to the shed was a vine-covered wooden outhouse divided discreetly in two sections, one for ladies, the other for gentlemen. A little way down under the bank near the Annapolis and Elkridge Railroad tracks, there was a flowing spring where a wooden bucket and a drinking gourd were kept for the thirsty. Here churchgoers filled pewter pitchers with fresh water for baptisms and the minister’s ablutions in the vestry.
Severn Parish in 1860 was pleased with the little new mission, set so conveniently between the railroad tracks and the public road from Baltimore to Annapolis, the very same road traveled alternately by the Continental and British armies during the early makings of America. Along this road the seed of the golden gorse of Scotland, let as waste, had sprouted, rooted and was blooming in profusion. To this very day the colors of Scotland are found in bloom in the Springtime.
St. Paul’s Chapel still stands there, exactly as first built, but the railroad tracks are gone, and the historic road winding by is hard-surfaced now and is known as The General’s Highway. This was the route taken by General of the Continental Army, George Washington, when he went to Annapolis to resign his commission.
It was in a time of tribulation that St. Paul’s Chapel was built at Crownsville. The first services were a prayer for peace between the States. And when the sad years were over, the parishioners gathered there to give thanks for the end of strife and to mourn the dead.
By not seceding Maryland was spared much of the savagery of conflict but sympathies were divided and hearts were torn. The Annapolis and Elkridge trains chugged by daily with soldiers and supplies for the front. Union soldiers patrolled the road and checked the congregation at worship.
At St. Paul’s Chapel the old families have gathered regularly by twos and threes throughout the years. Here they were baptized, confirmed, married, buried. Through the course of evolving times, dramatic changes have taken place in the countryside, but St. Paul’s Chapel remains the same, no alterations, no additions, still painted a spotless white inside and out. There are the same pitch pine pews, but now they are bright with new varnish, and the same heavy marble baptismal font stands at the rear. There is the same lectern with the old King James Bible; the same little altar with the single stained glass window inscribed in memory of a Rev. Hugh Maycock, and a window. undated, a name unknown, but a constant reminder of someone who long ago had stood for something very sacred in the sight of God.
The only new object is a Hammond organ—lately bought.
St. Paul’s always has a country fair and farm supper in the old grove when the corn is ripe. And then they come home again, the descendants of the founding families, from far and near, to sit and chat and sup in the shade and hear the roundelay of the mocking bird.
The new rector[1] who came to Severn Parish in 1910 was a man of great talents. He had served brilliantly in a large city parish, but his days were numbered with an incurable ailment. The time he had left he devoted to the people of his new parish. Tall, emaciated, but dynamic, his sermons struck like a thunderbolt in this farm neighborhood. The churchmen soon found out he was high church as well as an evangelist for our children. He invited every child of walking age to participate in his Sunday School and vested choir. Never before had there been such a fine choir or any high church ritual in Severn Parish. And the choir was composed of boys only! He was very firm about that. This electrified the parish. Many an indifferent Episcopalian, pleasantly relaxed over church attendance, perked up and came back to long-empty seats. St. Paul’s was thrilled and proud.
There were six Charles and Brice Worthington boys. The three Maynard Carr boys. Nine! Eight to walk two by two, and one to be the cross-bearer! Fair-haired Maynard Carr was chosen for cross bearer because of his fine looks. Full-throated Benjamin Skinner Carr was made the choir leader because of his beautiful appealing voice.
The ladies of the Guild who were the mothers of the boys made the choir vestments. They were ankle-length black cassocks with white linen capes and round turned down white linen collars tied with black silk bows. The 11 A.M. Easter Sunday service was selected for the choir’s premiere at St. Paul’s. The pastor trained his boys privately behind the closed doors of the chapel. Mrs. Brice Worthington, the organist, was the only outsider present at the rehearsals.
The mothers also made new altar cloths, white satin with heavy gold fringe and gold embroidery. Even the lectern had a new white and gold “throw,” and the old Bible a new white and gold “marker.” Local flowers bedecked the altar. Most of them were daffodils, the first flowers of spring to raise their golden trumpets to the Lord.
When the congregation entered St. Paul’s that Easter morning in 1910, they saw something new on the altar. Seven candles were glowing softly among the flowers below the stained glass window!
And all through the years that followed; between the burying and the marrying and the baptizing the survivors came back to the summer festival. Here reunion and farewell are steeped with laughter and hidden tears, and memory flashes bright with unforgettable faces.
“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
Our minister did not die a lingering death. This ardent high churchman died with merciful suddenness in an automobile crash a few years after 1910.
And in a grim time soon after, that choir of little boys were bearing arms in World War One. Benjamin Skinner Carr never came back. Only 18 years old, he was killed in the Argonne Forest in France on the 23rd of October, 1918 while leading a a machine gun squad in action. A placque dedicated to his memory hangs in the old chapel where he sang so happily that Easter in his boyhood. He is honored by the Annapolis Carr-Saffield Post of the 115th Infantry.
And of all the mothers who listened to their sons that day, only the organist is alive in 1958, Mrs. Brice Worthington, serene in her memories of a full life, lives alone in gracious old age as 12 Maryland Avenue.
[1] The new rector mentioned here is Rev. William R. Agate.