· HISTORY

· FACILITIES
      Chapel
      Parish Hall
      Ed. Buildings
      Thompson H.
      Cemetery

· POLICIES

· CLERGY & STAFF

· LAY LEADERS

· VESTRY MEETING MINUTES

· ANGLICAN FAITH

History of The Chapel of the Cross

The Chapel of the Cross started as the vision of John Johnstone, a man who would never see it built.

Originally conceived as a house of worship for one family and its servants, it was left to Margaret Johnstone to transform her late husband's dream into reality upon his death.

This she did in 1848 - with slave labor, hired artisans, grim determination and three thousand dollars. The bricks, which would ultimately make the Chapel's walls two feet thick, were "river bottom" brick, cast on-site from area clay.

The Chapel of the Cross was consecrated in 1852. Its original parishioners were Margaret Johnstone, her younger daughter Helen, the family of her elder daughter Frances Britton and the servants of the two plantations which housed both families, Annandale and Ingleside - both long-faded in the mists of history.

One particular episode in the earliest years of the chapel was as colorful as its times, and as classically Southern Gothic as any moonlight-and-magnolia novel of romance.

The households of the Johnstone family resounded with joy when Henry Grey Vick, son of the founder of Vicksburg, proposed marriage to Helen. A lavish celebration was planned for the wedding date, which was to fall on Helen's birthday.

The affront that caused the demand for ultimate satisfaction has faded into the mists of history, leaving behind a brutal fact and the birth of a legend. Four days before the wedding, the headstrong Vick met his death on the traditional field of honor, the dueling ground.

Griefstricken beyond consolation, Helen lead a torchlit procession - on the day her wedding was to have taken place - from Annandale Plantation to the chapel in the glade where Vick was laid to rest in the family graveyard.

While Helen would later wed George Harris, who ultimately served as rector of the church on three different occasions, there remain those who say her heart never totally mended from the shock of her fiancée's sudden death.

The historians, as historians are wont to do, claim this happened, and whether it did or not, the legend of "The Bride of Annandale" will remain part of the church for generations to come.

The golden age of plantation life vanished in the volley of cannonfire that launched the War Between the States in 1861. If the ancient aphorism of war being the ultimate irony of peace-loving people is true, perhaps one of the great paradoxes in the church's history is to be found in the fact the original bell, the bell which tolled the death knell for the fallen Henry Vick, was melted down for Confederate ammunition.

The antebellum style of living wasn't the only casualty of the rages of war. The vengeful nature of Reconstruction and widespread post-war poverty took its toll on The Chapel of the Cross as well.

For the next 40 years, The Chapel of the Cross would alternate between being an active church and an abandoned, neglected house of worship until the church was declared extinct by the Diocese of Mississippi shortly after the turn of the century.

The church found new life in 1911, when Margaret Britton Parsons, a granddaughter of John and Margaret Johnstone, persuaded the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi to reactivate the Chapel as an active house of worship. Since the Chapel's re-consecration, priests have taken charge of the operations of the church.

By the middle 1950s, The Chapel of the Cross was falling prey to the natural ravages of a century, despite its original solid construction. An accurate restoration of this historically significant house of worship was begun in 1956.

In 1979, the United States Department of the Interior awarded the chapel a $50,000 matching grant to finish the restoration the church to its original antebellum appearance.

It was in that same year the church's congregation initiated its annual fundraiser, "A Day in the Country." Traditionally held on the first Saturday of October, the event is evocative of both church "sociables" and rural country fairs from gentler, unruffled times. All proceeds are applied toward the continuing restoration and maintenance of the Chapel and its grounds and for other parish needs.

Today, many people come to The Chapel of the Cross for many different reasons.

Some come to see the building itself due to its wide recognition as one of the two finest examples of Nineteenth Century Gothic Revival church architecture in the United States.

Some come to simply touch history, examine the stone markers in the church's historic graveyard, or ponder the possibility of an appearance by a spectral bride.

And, as it should be, many gather to worship in this special, working church in a glade surrounded by both hardwoods and history.

No matter what your reason to visit may be, welcome.
- By Steven Hicks

Click here to access Shadows of a Chapel produced by parishioner Glenn Smith.

Additional information from Mississippi Department of Archives and History

John Johnstone came to Mississippi from Hillsborough, North Carolina, ca. 1820, with his brothers, Samuel and William. The three men patented land near Livingston, the first permanent settlement in Madison County and engaged in farming operations. From his holdings of approximately 2,600 acres, Johnstone accumulated a fortune which made possible the construction of two elaborate plantation residences: Ingleside, a wedding gift in 1846 to the elder Johnstone daughter, Frances, and her husband, William Britton, and Annandale built in 1855 for Johnstone's widow and their second daughter, Helen.

In June 1851, for the consideration of $10, Margaret Johnstone deeded to the Diocese of Mississippi 10 acres of her plantation as the site of Chapel of the Cross.

For nearly a decade following its consecration and its admission to the diocese in 1853, the chapel flourished as a small but dedicated parish under the guidance of Dr. Henry Sansome, a native of Nottinghamshire, England.

In 1867, after the effects of the Civil War, Bishop William Mercer Green observed, " … It was then surrounded by its early friends and founders and blessed with frequent ministrations black and white sharing equally in the instructions of a faithful pastor. Now, strangers are pressing their boundaries close up to the sacred enclosure of its dead; mould is fast gathering on its walls and from Lord's day to Lord's day no track is seen of anyone going up to this house of prayer."

In 1868 the parish again became active upon the arrival of Dr. George Harris. The parish was inactive and without a rector from 1871-82 at which time the Harrises returned for period of six years.

In 1903, the parish was declared extinct and removed from the diocese until 1914, when Bishop Bratton reported, "… I organized the Chapel of the Cross, Annandale, Madison County … this organization revives a mission which flourished before the war, was continued for some years after it and was closed years before my coming."

In 1956, full physical restoration of the Chapel of the Cross was initiated as a project of the Dancing Rabbit Creek Chapter of The Children of the American Revolution sponsored by the Magnolia State Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Jackson.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Chapel currently hosts four worship services on Sundays.