The organization of Saint Stephen’s Protestant Episcopal Church was begun in 1878 by the Reverend Boyd Vincent, at that time rector of Calvary Parish, East End, Pittsburgh.
Previous efforts for the establishment of a mission in Wilkinsburg had been made by Calvary Parish in 1860, and again in 1865, but these efforts were unsuccessful, owing to the small number of Episcopalians in Wilkinsburg and vicinity.
Church services and Sunday School were first held in the basement of an abandoned hotel known as Hamilton Hall. The superstructure of this building, standing on Penn Avenue, just over the city line from Wilkinsburg, had been destroyed by fire before completion, and had not been rebuilt.
In 1879 Miss Mary Bennett and Mrs. David Little gathered together a small group of children and organized a Sunday School. A. T. Rowand of Edgewood served as superintendent.
There are no written records of these efforts until July 1, 1881, when George Hodges, a candidate for Holy Orders, came to Calvary as assistant to Mr. Vincent. He was given charge of Saint Stephen’s. There were about twelve children in the Sunday School and as many people at the church service which followed. Mr. Hodges read the evening service and preached the first sermon in the Parish mission on that date.
Already Mr. Hodges gave promise of his great achievements in Social Service, in which he took a pre-eminent place in his later career.
He was a pioneer in relating religion to community life. Full of energy, he walked with his head down and with the rapidity of a steam engine. His congregation was so scattered that he tells of walking five miles to make ten calls. But he was rewarded, for the small number of parishioners increased until at Christmas there were fifty children in the Church School. The Christmas festival this year, 1881, was the last service in Hamilton Hall. The foundation was torn down soon afterwards. A new place must be found. Brace Brothers’ Steam Laundry in Park Place was offered rent free.
In his diary Mr. Hodges says: “Those who wandered through the almost unfathomable mud as far as the Laundry found a large room, lined about the edges with ironing tables and other machinery of clothes-cleaning, often decorated with belated collars and cuffs, and furnished on Sunday afternoons with the benches, always worse for wear and weather, which were stored out of doors during the week. In the winter the service and sermon and Sunday School proceeded to the distracting and penetrating sound of the hiss of natural gas from the furnace. Passers-by looked in the windows; the bolder spirits gathered about the door. Employees of the Laundry came several times during most services to draw water at a pump in the rear of the room, with much obtrusive squeaking of pump handle and slamming of door. Dogs prowled about during the prayers; children were inspired with misdirected curiosity. Cows never came in during the service, and the congregation congratulated themselves on that as a happy exemption. After the services were over and everybody was gone, the laundry girls took possession and danced un-Sabbatarian jigs to the music of the unhappy melodeon. All these circumstances were arguments for a church building.”
During the laundry days “cottage meetings” were held in the homes of parishioners on Friday evenings. With the steady increase in numbers plans for a chapel were discussed and a building finally decided on. Prior to this Parish Mission a town lot had been given by James Kelly to an organization known as “The Church of the Atonement”, on the vestry list of which are found, among others, the names of Joseph H. Hill, Thomas Hartley, and Professor B. C. Jillson. This organization had put its rights and property into the hands of Calvary Parish. Being thus provided with ground a canvass was made for securing $3100 to build a chapel on the large corner lot bounded by Franklin, Pitt and Rebecca Avenues. The building was erected and under roof by Advent, 1882.
Before there were windows, doors or furniture in place, the first service was held Christmas Day, 1882. Muslin served for glass in the windows and the place was none too warm. Mr. Hodges and his wife were as happy over this simple wooden building as if it had been a permanent stone church. Folding doors towards the end of the nave closed the rear of the building which could be used for a parish house. Gifts soon filled the needs of a fence, outside lights, a lighting system, and memorial vases for the altar, and a really beautiful chancel window.
Mr. Hodges was a great organizer. He formed a guild for girls (Saint Francisca’s), a club for boys (Saint Christopher’s), a Women’s Aid Society, and a Chess Club for men. A sewing school on Saturday afternoons brought together a group of seventy-five children. Work was varied by singing hymns and as there were no hymn books the words were stencilled in large letters on muslin.
St. Stephen’s was now a going concern. A Public Library was not as great a success as was hoped for but a Book Club brought to subscribers on alternate Mondays a book of fiction and one of non-fiction. During the first year, thirteen persons were confirmed and communion was celebrated six times. Mr. Hodges drove out from Calvary after Sunday School to hold morning service at St. Stephen’s. His preaching began to be talked about. People said, “We cannot hope to keep him, he is too big”. Calls began to come to him and Calvary awakened to the fact that they could not afford to lose him. He was made associate Rector of Calvary in 1887 when he moved to East Liberty from the little Rectory beside the Chapel where he and his wife had gone to housekeeping.
While he still had an oversight of St. Stephen’s, his own personal work there was finished. St. Stephen’s now needed the full time of a clergyman and Mr. William Heakes was called. After the consecration of Mr. Vincent as Bishop of Southern Ohio, Mr. Hodges was made Rector of Calvary. St. Stephen’s became an independent parish under its first Rector, the Rev. W. C. Rodgers, January, 1890.
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Francis Stewart Hall, “St. Stephen’s Protestant Episcopal Church,” in Elizabeth M. Davison and Ellen B. McKee eds., Annals of Old Wilkinsburg and Vicinity: The Village 1788–1888. Wilkinsburg, Pa.: Group for Historical Research, 1940, pp. 490–493.