For a while now, Laurie and I had been curious about the image of St. George's Church shown on the St. Mark's website and wondered where it had come from, as we hadn't seen it in any other source. Now we have an answer. Laurie and Angelika told me about the book History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the County of Westchester by Reverend Robert Bolton. Laurie identified a passage that mentioned that St. Mark's was built "a few yards" away from the old site of St. George's, and Angelika pointed out the passage that contained the (oft quoted but never sourced!) letter written by Reverend Thomas Dibble on March 25, 1762:
"I preached the second Sunday in October last, in St. George's church, at North Castle, and at the opening of it, to a most numerous congregation, the church not being able to contain the people. They have erected a very decent church for public worship, forty foot by thirty, with galleries, covered and closed it with cedar, and only laid the ground floor."When I went to look at the book for myself, I found the mysterious picture (above) - captioned not as St. George's Church, but St. Mark's! Upon closer inspection, it became very clear that this was, in fact, the same St. Mark's building we know from photographs, albeit with a castellated tower in the place of the shingled steeple.
Since the book was written in 1855, I have to assume that this illustration represents the original appearance of St. Mark's. Looking at the photograph above, you can see that the tower was not altered dramatically; in fact, if you remove the steeple, the church would be nearly restored to its original state.
Bolton also provides this description of St. Mark's:
"It is a very neat church-like structure, and is pleasantly situated on the west side of Kirby's pond ... The building was much admired, as a beautiful model for a country church. It is fifty by thirty feet, with a tower projecting eight feet in front, and is constructed of the best materials in a substantial manner."
No comments:
Post a Comment