History 15+ decades of fame
| St. Mary’s: 15 Decades of Fame |
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Before it became an Episcopal cathedral, St. Mary’s was a mission church, organized in 1857 by members of Calvary Episcopal Church on the semi-rural, eastern fringe of Memphis, Tennessee, on a spot now considered to be part of Downtown. It became the cathedral church of the old statewide Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee in 1871 and later the cathedral of the Diocese of West Tennessee with the creation of the three dioceses within Tennessee in 1983.
1857-58
A small wooden Gothic structure was built on a lot located at the eastern edge of the city at Poplar and Orleans, given by Robert C. Brinkley and his wife Anne Overton Brinkley. On Thanksgiving Day, 1857, the first wardens and vestry were elected and the first rector, Richard Hines, was called. It was the desire of James Otey, the First Bishop of Tennessee, that "free seats" and "openness to all" would be the policy of this church, built as a "house of prayer for all people." St. Mary's Church was officially dedicated on the following Ascension Day (May 13, 1858).
In 1871, members of St. Mary’s presented the church’s keys to Charles Quintard, Second Bishop of Tennessee, to use as his seat or cathedral.
While the Episcopal Church in the United States was once a part of the Church of England, the American dioceses were slow to designate official cathedrals in keeping with the Protestant or Reformed character of its members. As the Oxford Movement’s “high church” or Roman Catholic-style liturgy and beliefs finally began to take root in the U.S., Episcopal cathedrals began to appear. With a devoted high churchman as its bishop, the Diocese of Tennessee was among the earliest in America (possibly the first in the South) to designate one of its parishes as a cathedral.
Construction of its present English Gothic Revival structure began in 1898 and was completed in 1926, when the parenthetical phrase "(Gailor Memorial)" was appended to the cathedral's formal name in honor of the Thomas Frank Gailor, Third Bishop of Tennessee.
Bishop Gailor led the Diocese of Tennessee 32 years and served for six years as the organizing president of the National Council of the Episcopal Church, whose authority was equivalent to the modern-day Presiding Bishop. A figure of international renown, Bishop Gailor advised and preached abroad and studied the great cathedrals of Europe to gather ides for his cathedral. He wanted this church to be "worthy of the diocese and a pride to the city." He wanted it to be "pure in architecture and pure in color, a living symbol of the name it bears."
Martyrs and the Cathedral
St. Mary's is closely associated with two episodes of martyrdom known throughout the world. Both episodes dramatically reduced the size of St. Mary's congregation, either through death or controversy.
Constance and Her Companions:
Memphis suffered periodic epidemics of yellow fever, a mosquito-borne viral infection, throughout the 19th century. The worst of the epidemics occurred in the summer of 1878, when 5,150 Memphians died. Five years earlier, a group of Episcopal nuns from the recently formed Sisterhood of St. Mary arrived in Memphis to operate the St. Mary's School for Girls, which was relocated to the cathedral site. When the 1878 epidemic struck, a number of priests and nuns (both Protestant and Catholic), doctors, and even the proprietress of a bordello stayed behind to tend to the sick and dying. The Episcopal nuns' superior, Sister Constance, three other Episcopal nuns, and two Episcopal priests are known throughout the Anglican Communion as "Constance and Her Companions" or the "Martyrs of Memphis". Added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981, their feast day (September 9) commemorates their sacrifices.
A traditional Anglican prayer memorializes the Martyrs in this way:
The high altar of the cathedral, consecrated on Whitsunday 1879, was commissioned by Bishop Quintard to memorialize the Sisters of St. Mary who died. Inscribed on the altar steps are "Alleluia Osanna," Constance's last words. Sister Hughetta (Snowden) survived the plague, and when she died in 1926, her name was added to the steps, replacing the verse, "He feedeth among the lilies." The reredos (altar backdrop) is also a memorial to Sister Hughetta.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The second historic/tragic event that St. Mary's Cathedral attempted to mitigate was the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The day after King's death, Me
 mphis clergy from many churches and synagogues met at the cathedral. In an impromptu move, Dean William Dimmick (later Bishop of Northern Michigan) took up the Cathedral's processional cross and led many of the assembled ministers down Poplar Avenue to City Hall to petition Mayor Henry C. Loeb to end the labor standoff that King was in town to help negotiate. Nearly half of the Cathedral's membership eventually left in protest of Dimmick's gesture of racial unity.
Speaking of rivers
For many years St. Mary’s Cathedral and the original statewide Diocese of Tennessee would share a Latin motto, usque ad flumen, meaning “even unto the river,” a recurring phrase from the King James Bible. Like the state, the Diocese of Tennessee extended from the mountains in the east “even unto" the Mississippi River. Ubique inter flumina, has been the motto of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee since its creation in 1983. It means "everywhere between the rivers," referring to the approximate western and eastern borders of West Tennessee, the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers. St. Mary’s, now the cathedral church of West Tennessee, retained usque ad flumen as its motto.
The bishop next door
In 1859, a house and lot immediately west of the church were given to Bishop Otey for his "Bishop's House," and for many years the Bishop resided next door. In 1902, a new Gothic residence was built on that site. It was given to Bishop Gailor, Third Bishop of Tennessee, for his residence. During the episcopate of the Fourth Bishop of Tennessee, James Matthew Maxon, the diocesan offices were moved into the building, and "Bishop's House" became "Diocesan House." Further renovation occurred during the tenures of Bishop Theodore Nott Barth and others.
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