Before it became an Episcopal cathedral, St. Marys was a mission church, organized in 1857 by members of Calvary Episcopal Church on the sem...
Before it became an Episcopal cathedral, St. Marys was a mission church, organized in 1857 by members of Calvary Episcopal Church on the semi-rural, eastern fringe of Memphis, Tennessee, on a spot now considered to be part of Downtown. It became the cathedral church of the old statewide Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee in 1871 and later the cathedral of the Diocese of West Tennessee with the creation of the three dioceses within Tennessee in 1983. rnrnA small wooden Gothic structure was built on a lot located at the eastern edge of the city at Poplar and Orleans, given by Robert C. Brinkley and his wife Anne Overton Brinkley. On Thanksgiving Day, 1857, the first wardens and vestry were elected and the first rector, Richard Hines, was called. It was the desire of James Otey, the First Bishop of Tennessee, that "free seats" and "openness to all" would be the policy of this church, built as a "house of prayer for all people." St. Mary's Church was officially dedicated on the following Ascension Day (May 13, 1858). rnIn 1871, members of St. Marys presented the churchs keys to Charles Quintard, Second Bishop of Tennessee, to use as his seat or cathedral. rnrnWhile the Episcopal Church in the United States was once a part of the Church of England, the American dioceses were slow to designate official cathedrals in keeping with the Protestant or Reformed character of its members. As the Oxford Movements high church or Roman Catholic-style liturgy and beliefs finally began to take root in the U.S., Episcopal cathedrals began to appear. With a devoted high churchman as its bishop, the Diocese of Tennessee was among the earliest in America (possibly the first in the South) to designate one of its parishes as a cathedral.rnrnConstruction of its present English Gothic Revival structure began in 1898 and was completed in 1926.rnrnMartyrs and the CathedralrnSt. Mary's is closely associated with two episodes of martyrdom known throughout the world. Both episodes dramatically reduced the size of St. Mary's congregation, either through death or controversy.rnrnConstance and Her Companions:rnMemphis suffered periodic epidemics of yellow fever, a mosquito-borne viral infection, throughout the 19th century. The worst of the epidemics occurred in the summer of 1878, when 5,150 Memphians died. Five years earlier, a group of Episcopal nuns from the recently formed Sisterhood of St. Mary arrived in Memphis to operate the St. Mary's School for Girls, which was relocated to the cathedral site. When the 1878 epidemic struck, a number of priests and nuns (both Protestant and Catholic), doctors, and even the proprietress of a bordello stayed behind to tend to the sick and dying. The Episcopal nuns' superior, Sister Constance, three other Episcopal nuns, and two Episcopal priests are known throughout the Anglican Communion as "Constance and Her Companions" or the "Martyrs of Memphis". Added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981, their feast day (September 9) commemorates their sacrifices.rnrnMartin Luther King, Jr.:rnThe second historic/tragic event that St. Mary's Cathedral attempted to mitigate was the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The day after King's death, Memphis clergy from many churches and synagogues met at the cathedral. In an impromptu move, Dean William Dimmick (later Bishop of Northern Michigan) took up the Cathedral's processional cross and led many of the assembled ministers down Poplar Avenue to City Hall to petition Mayor Henry C. Loeb to end the labor standoff that King was in town to help negotiate. Nearly half of the Cathedral's membership eventually left in protest of Dimmick's gesture of racial unity. Less
