St. Paul’s Church in Edenton, North Carolina, traces its parish origins to 1701, when the Vestry Act created St. Paul’s Parish and its first vestry organized a wooden church and poor relief. The present brick church, begun in 1736 and finished in 1774, is the second oldest church building in North Carolina and the state’s only colonial church still in regular parish use. Long tied to the colony’s political life, its members included prominent governors and Joseph Hewes, and its churchyard holds several colonial governors’ tombs. Renovated in 1806, rebuilt after a devastating 1949 fire, it remains an active parish with deep colonial roots.