Qualla: St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina)

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Epicjeff, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1816, a Fayetteville man named John Winslow rode to Wilmington to ask a priest a question. Could the Episcopalians in his town, scattered among a population overwhelmingly Scottish Presbyterian, finally have a church of their own? The Reverend Dr. Bethell Judd answered yes. He came back to Fayetteville with Winslow, and on April 7, 1817, the parish formally organized. Judd became its first rector. Two centuries later, his successors are still preaching from the same Green Street ground, in a sanctuary that has now outlived the city's most famous catastrophe.

Image: Epicjeff | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): The First Building

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bobistraveling, CC BY 2.0. The local Masonic lodge laid the foundation in 1817. The first church rose with a single spire, and into that spire someone installed the town clock, a civic gift that meant the Episcopalians had given Fayetteville its sense of time as well as its newest congregation. The buildin...

Image: bobistraveling | CC BY 2.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): The Great Fire

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerry Dincher, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Great Fire of 1831 burned through downtown Fayetteville on May 29, taking hundreds of structures with it. The Masonic-laid church, the clock-bearing spire, the four-figure investment of the small Episcopalian community: all gone. Buxton, freshly arrived as rector, would spend...

Image: Gerry Dincher | CC BY-SA 2.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): Nineteen Rectors and Counting

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Joseph Caldwell Huske held the parish for thirty-seven years, from 1851 to 1888, the longest tenure in the church's history. He carried the congregation through the Civil War, through Reconstruction, through the slow rebuilding of a southern town that had been, briefly, the seat ...

Image: RadioFan at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): The Chapel and the Kyle House

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerry Dincher, CC BY-SA 2.0. The main sanctuary is for Sunday morning, but the Chapel of the Beloved Disciple gathers smaller weekday congregations under a more intimate ceiling. In 1990, the parish bought the Kyle House next door, a 139-year-old home that had watched Green Street change around it. By 2002, ...

Image: Gerry Dincher | CC BY-SA 2.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Fayetteville, North Carolina): Downtown's Anchor

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit allie, CC BY-SA 2.0. The National Register of Historic Places lists St. John's among Fayetteville's protected buildings. The designation matters less than what the church does day to day. Public tours run by appointment. The Munich glass still catches the afternoon light. The clock that once hung in ...

Image: allie | CC BY-SA 2.0