St. John's Episcopal Church, historically known as St. John's Anglican Church, is a church in Christiansted, Virgin Islands. Although most of the current building dates to 1868, a church has been located on the site since the 18th century. It and its adjacent graveyard were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. It is located within the Christiansted Historic District, to which it is also a contributing property.
Restoration efforts were continuing in 2017.
History
Establishment and early history
The land that would become St. John's Anglican Church was purchased in 1752 by the Church of England, who wanted to establish a presence on Saint Croix. Although the island was then part of the Danish West Indies, there was a large, growing population of English, Irish, and Scots inhabitants. This was the first permanent parish successfully established by the Church of England on Saint Croix; for this reason, it has been nicknamed the "Mother Church of the Diocese". The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts funded the church in its first years; the group felt that Christianity in colonial areas was neglected and that morals of citizens there were too relaxed. The parish was established in Christiansted in 1760 when the Reverend Cecil Wray Goodchild traveled from Teddington, England, to become Rector of the Parish. With Goodchild's arrival, the church was placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. This original church was a simple cross-shaped wooden structure placed upon a brick foundation. Goodchild stayed in this role until his retirement in 1785; he and his wife are buried in the churchyard.
Between 1765 and 1773, United States Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and his family attended worship services here intermittently, as their residence was located nearby. Hamilton also attended the church's school. The 1768 death of Hamilton's mother, Rachel Faucette, was recorded in St. John's burial registry; however, she was buried alongside relatives on Tuite's Grange Plantation, located outside of Christiansted. St. John's has been damaged or destroyed several times since its initial construction. The first of these was on August 31, 1772, when a hurricane destroyed the wooden church structure entirely. Hamilton would later publish a recount of the hurricane's devastation in the Royal Danish American Gazette; it was this account that gained him enough recognition to enable him to enter high society and fund his education in the United States. The new church was crafted from sturdier Bermudan sandstone and was completed in 1779; this larger building could now seat 500 worshippers. Records exist of the establishment of a "poor-school" prior to 1796 and a poorhouse in 1810.
The African diaspora made up a large part of St. John's congregation, and Black residents―both free and enslaved―worshipped alongside white residents. However, worship services were segregated; Black worshippers had an allocated spot apart from their white counterparts and were unable to sit in the pews. In 1794, free Black parishioners petitioned the church to be able to rent pews; this was approved by the vestry in 1797. Their allocated section was in "the North part of the gallery and the double pew under the same". However, their presence caused contention and pushback from white parishioners, and in 1810 the decision was reversed, barring Black worshippers from occupying any pew. They were also disallowed from providing their own chairs; only a section of moveable chairs in the middle aisle was made available. The gallery was reallocated to be used by the military garrisons present on the island. Still, Black Crucians continued to worship and gather here. Until the abolition of slavery in 1848, separate burial, marriage, and baptism registers were kept for enslaved and free worshippers. An account from the 1830s notes that Black attendees now had an allocated spot to worship but were still made to enter the church through a separate entrance from their white counterparts. By the 1910s, however, no such segregation inside the church existed.