Trinity Episcopal Church

In 1881, the Rev. Mr. Franklin of St. John's Episcopal Chapel in Earleton led the service that began Trinity Church, whose congregants met fortnightly in a member's home. When the congregation grew to 9 families, members organized a Ladies' Aid Society and Sunday school, purchased land, and planned a church facing Bellamy Road, the first federal highway in Florida. In 1885, Bishop John Freeman Young organized Trinity Mission, and in 1885-1886 carpenter E.L. Judd used locally cut heart pine to construct the Carpenter Gothic style church, designed by Richard Upjohn, architect of New York City's Trinity Church. The walls were one board thick with battens inside and out, simple modified scissor trusses supported the roof, a church member constructed the marching priest's chair and reredos, and the pier foundations and chimney were made of brick from the nearby Campville Brick Works. Construction cost $327.71. As Melrose grew, Trinity prospered, and by 1886 it had forty-eight baptized members. The freeze of 1894-95 wiped out the citrus industry and brought an economic depression to the area, but Trinity remained active under Bishop Edwin Gardner Weed. In 1895, Mr. Judd added a transept to the north end of the chapel. Stained glass lancet windows shipped from England via Lake Santa Fe on the Alert steamboat were added in 1915, and the window behind the altar was installed in 1926. Boy Scout Troop 109 was formed in the 1920s, and boys could attend meetings even if they had no shoes. In 1938-39, under the Rev. Mr. Fred G. Yerkes, Archdeacon of the Diocese of Florida, the church acquired additional property and the Scouts constructed a Scout Hut later used as the Melrose Library. In 1948, a Camp Blanding chapel building was moved onto the property and served as the parish house until it burned in 1985; its replacement, Yerkes Hall, was completed in 1986. In 1987, to install a 1936 Moller organ originally from St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, the chimney was removed and a loft built for the pipes. The Gano-Norton building was constructed in 1996. Trinity Mission called its first full time priest in 2008 and became a parish in 2010.

Florida · United States