About St. Alban's Episcopal Church
-
St. Alban's was first organized as a parish in 1857 with the help of Rev. James Angel Fox. On June 18, 1858, the vestry and congregation voted to erect a church about a quarter mile southwest of the train depot in Bovina. Three and three-quarter acres of land near the tracks were deeded to the "Vestrymen and trustees of the Protestant Episcopal Church called the Church of the Nativity" by Mr. and Mrs. Peterson Bass on September 23, 1858, and $5,000 was raised to build the church. The Rt. Rev. William M. Green, Bishop of Mississippi, consecrated the church now known as St. Albans on May 5, 1859. Rev. William C. Crane of Jackson, MS, gave the sermon on that day.
The church was defiled and destroyed by the Union Army in 1863 during the seige of Vicksburg. In 1871 Biship Green reported to the diocese, "..Within the last year a Church edifice has been erected on the site of the one destroyed by the Northern invading army during the late war. The cost of the new building, which is still incomplete, has been about $1,200 - $100 of which was a donation from St. Alban's Church, N.Y., and about $150 from friends in Vicksburg, the remainder from the Bovina neighborhood. A few hundred dollars are wanting to complete the building..." The church was consecrated on February 27, 1880.
In 1927, Matilda Townsend Palmer who was raised in the church bequeathed a large sum of money to St. Alban's to build a new church. The 1870 wood-frame structure, retained as the parish hall, adjoined the new and beautiful Gothic revival church. A matching brick exterior was placed around the old church with a connecting hallway. The door to the hallway features a rose window made from shards of glass saved from the ruins of the first church in 1863. The church was consecrated on October 20, 1929, with Bishop Theodore Bratton officiating.
Today, St. Ablan's invites everyone to "Come to the Country."
