In 1882, St. Paul’s Church established a mission in the
neighborhood west of Cameron Hill a little south of the west end of Sixth
Street. At that time, Sixth Street came
over the hill where West Martin Luther King Boulevard (formerly West 9th
Street) does now, while Ninth Street crossed over a couple of blocks south of
that. The neighborhood, later known as
Tannery Flats, had been built for the employees at Roane Iron Works, founded
and owned by former Union officers John T. Wilder, Hiram Chamberlain, and W.A.
Rockwood.
St. John’s Chapel, was built with funds raised by Miss E. C.
Buckler, who had organized a Sunday school of about eighty pupils, from her
friends in the east. St. John’s was a
brick structure west of the hill in the neighborhood was later known as the
Tannery Flats, at the corner of Ninth Street and Short Street. Bishop Q. T. Quintard, a former chaplain in
the Confederate army, consecrated the chapel on 19 February 1882. Among its furnishings was a marble baptismal
font given by Mrs. John Minturn.
In 1890, Roane Iron Works shut its doors, driven out of
business by the rapid progress in technologies to produce low-cost steel in the
North. With its closing, much of the
surrounding population drifted away, including current and potential members of
St. John’s Chapel. It soon closed, and
when Christ Church organized eleven years later, it was gifted the font, which
was originally placed in what used to be the baptistery at the liturgical north
end of the narthex.
What few records exist from St. Paul’s in the 1868-1909
period indicate that from 1890 until 1909, the main church building was not
used.
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