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St. Stephen's Church
Ridgeway History
Winnsboro History |
SAINT STEPHEN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
The second Ridgeway church after Aimwell, Presbyterian, was
Cedar Creek Mission, organized by the Episcopalians in 1839, when the
Reverend Cranmore Wallace held the first Episcopal services in the
AIMWELL MEETING HOUSE and baptized several Davis, Palmer, and Thomas
children. In 1805 and 1826 the Reverend Edward Thomas, a missionary of
the Advancement Society, had visited Fairfield and preached at the
Courthouse at Winnsboro.
However, it was not until Mr. Edward Gendron Pa1mer fitted up a house
on what is now Palmer Street in Ridgeway, in 1841, that the Ridgeway
Episcopalians had a place to worship. This is the homesite of the late
Robert Charlton Thomas, now the home of Mr. John Jones.
The widow of Doctor James Davis, Mrs. Catherine Ross Davis, who had
moved to Ridgeway and built IVEY HILL (the site of the Ridgeway Public
School) after tlZe death of her husband in Columbia in order to he near
her daughter, Mrs. Edward G. Palmer, gave in the early 1850's ten acres
of land on which Saint Stephen's Chapel was built. Bisllop Davis
consecrated Saint Stephen's on August 4, 1854, as a chapel of Saint
John's Parish, Winnsboro The two Fairfield Episcopal churches had taken
the names of low country parishes whence so many of their earliest
members had migrated to Fairfield.
The earliest members of Saint Stephen's, in addition Davis's, Palmer,
and Thomas families, were the Peays and Meyers of Longtown and the
Machettes of Dutchman's Creek. This marked the first of the German
Lutherans in the area, some who became Episcopalians, as had the French
Huguenots,. such as the Gaillards and Couturiers, in the lowcountry.
One of the really great figures in the Episcopal Church of America.
Reverend William Porcher DuBose, a native of Fairfield County, served
Saint Stephen's, Ridgeway, and Saint John's, Winnsboro, as rector
immediately after the War, upon his return to his native state, from
1865 to 1868. Later, at the University of the South, Sewanee, as dean,
chaplain, and professor, for the remaining years of his long and
fruitful life, Dr. DuBosc through many writings became a world figure in
tile realm of philosophy and religion. He was called by English scholars
"the wisest man on both sides of the Atlantic."
In more than forty years on the faculty of Sewanee, Dr. DuBose came to
represent the Spirit of Sewanee, and to generations of students he
became the Sage of Sewanee, revered by all who came under his quiet but
powerful influence.
It is no singular coincidence that Fairfield County, with its, rich
religous and educational background of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and
Mount Zion College, its low country English and French Huguenots in
Saint John's and Saint Stephen's Episcopal Churches, its historic
Methodism, and as the birthplace of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian
Church, has given so many leaders to religion and education in the
state, the South, and the nation. In its early years Mount Zion supplied
the vast bulk of educated men to the Presbyterian ministry; and both
Wofford College and South Carolina Methodism's great James Henry
Carlisle, and Sewanee and the Episcopal Church's scholoarly William
Porter DuBoxe studied and later taught at Mount Zion, were both natives
of natives Fairfield County.
The little church St. Stephen's that was built in 1854 is the oldest
and one of the most beautifil land marks at Ridgeway. It is a pictureque
building, characterized by a steep gabled roof, giving it the appearance
of an ancient Gothic chapel. Handsom stained-glass windows, deepset in
narrow Gothic arches, further dramatize the architecture. The church was
orginally a frame structure, painted red. In the 1920's it was brick
venneered, and in the 1940's a win containing the parich hous and Church
School was added, enhancing, rather than dtracting from, the orignal
design.
The grounds consist of a well-kept cemetery, dotted with tombstones and
graves bearing the names of the builders and early families. The
churchyard is enclosed with a handsome wrought-iron fence and sturdy
gateways. |
