Fascinating facts of diocesan history

A statue of Francis Eppes at Florida State University, which he helped found.

At an early morning Eucharist in a cold January dawn at the St. Mary Chapel in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke I was gazing up at the magnificent stained glass window behind the altar when there crossed my mind an incident that occurred during the first years of St. Luke’s founding. (I cannot help these throwbacks to history – after all, I am the diocesan historiographer!)

Dating back to the year 1884, the Bishop of Florida, the Rt. Rev. John Freeman Young, made a visitation and recorded in his diary: “On Epiphany, I visited St. Luke’s Church, Orlando, and confirmed nine. The very cold weather, the windows of the church not having been received, rendered it unsafe to remain in the church for any other services than the Confirmation Office.” Cold spells in early January appear to be the rule rather than an exception.

The bishop had made a visitation to St. Luke’s three years earlier and offered to build the church with diocesan funds if the congregation would secure a favorable lot and donate $600 to the project. The response far exceeded the bishop’s expectations. “The finest site in or about the town,” he wrote, “was decided upon and secured, it being the crown of a ridge, descending to a lake, within two blocks of the Courthouse, and therefore very central and accessible.”

This information from the Diocesan Journal of 1882 is cited in A Goodly Heritage, the first volume in a history of the Diocese of South Florida by Joseph D. Cushman, Jr. and published by the University of Florida Press.. It is an invaluable source for learning about the Episcopal Church in Florida and the faithful pioneers who helped establish it, among them Francis Eppes, founder of St. Luke’s, and who, back in 1838, was one of the originators of the Diocese of Florida.

The second volume of Cushman’s history, The Sound of Bells, has a colorful account of three men who were among the first group of immigrants from England to settle in Orange County in 1881 and worked to bring the fledgling St. Luke’s Mission to parish status. They were Henry Sweetapple, Charles Lord and Algernon Haden. Sweetapple came to Orlando, having made a fortune in silver mining in Nevada. He has been described as a man of “quiet devoutness, a simplicity of spirit, and an unparaded generosity.” He loved Orlando and he loved his church.

Charles Lord was a generous contributor to a project of special importance to Bishop William Crane Gray, the Church Home and Hospital, the first such facility in Orlando and the forerunner of today’s Regional Medical Center. Lord is especially noted for having procured two pairs of swans in England and presenting them to Orlando. It may be their descendants still float on the waters of Lake Eola.

Algernon Haden was a deputy from St. Luke’s to the 1893 primary convention of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida, which is what we became after our separation from the Diocese of Florida, later to become the Diocese of South Florida, from which, in turn, evolved in 1969 Central Florida and two other Florida dioceses. Haden was a vestryman, a member of the choir, a longtime faithful supporter of the Cathedral, and something of a wit who did his best to liven up Chapter meetings.

Any parishioner in the diocese who is interested, and would like to follow up the fascinating facets of our history, will find at the Cathedral Library and at Diocesan House a complete set of Convention Journals dating from 1893, and a complete set of The Palm Branch, the diocesan periodical from 1894 to 1970. The Journals and Diocesan publications of the Diocese of Central Florida begin with 1970. None of these publications may be borrowed, but there is ample space for reading and research in both places.