Trinity-St. Paul's Episcopal Church in

New Rochelle New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state o ...

Westchester County, New York Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City. According to the 2020 United States Census, the county had a population ...

was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2006. It is located at the northwest corner of Huguenot Street (also known as the

Boston Post Road The Boston Post Road was a system of mail-delivery routes between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts that evolved into one of the first major highways in the United States. The three major alignments were the Lower Post Road (now U.S. Ro ...

) and Division Street. This church represents the body of the majority group of New Rochelle's founding

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

French Calvinistic congregation that conformed to the liturgy of the established

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

in June 1709.

King George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great B ...

gave Trinity its first charter in 1762. After the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

, Trinity became a parish of the

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

Episcopal Church of America. The present building is the third church erected by the

conformist Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. People often choo ...

congregation A congregation is a large gathering of people, often for the purpose of worship. Congregation may also refer to: *Church (congregation), a Christian organization meeting in a particular place for worship *Congregation (Roman Curia), an administra ...

. It is the immediate successor of a wooden church building erected in 1823 - 1824. It stands on land that was conveyed to the church wardens by Aman Guion in 1743. The cornerstone was laid on August 13, 1862, the church was opened for worship September 13, 1863, and the tower completed November 30, 1864. The church was designed by Richard Upjohn & Son, known for their

gothic revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

architecture. A parish house was added on the western side of the church in 1892. Constructed of the same

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

and

brownstone Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Type ...

materials as the church, the structure was designed by architect Frederick Carles Merry, who also designed the New Rochelle Trust building on Main Street.

Church heirlooms

Within the stone walls of the church are a number of artifacts, or 'heirlooms', that have been handed down through generations of this 300-year-old congregation. They highlight the long history of the church and of the New Rochelle community. A silver

chalice A chalice (from Latin 'mug', borrowed from Ancient Greek () 'cup') or goblet is a footed cup intended to hold a drink. In religious practice, a chalice is often used for drinking during a ceremony or may carry a certain symbolic meaning. R ...

presented to the church by Queen Anne of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, received after its conformation to the

in 1709, is inscribed "Anne Regina". The stained glass windows in the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. ...

are memorials to Rev. Bondet, Rev. Pierre Stouppe and Rev. Michael Houdin, Trinity's first three ministers. Many other

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows, some of which were crafted by Tiffany, grace the church. The 19th and 20th century congregants, for whom the windows were dedicated, include such names as ''Iselin'', ''Weyman'', ''Davenport'', ''Thorne'' and ''Lathers''. The old bell originally in the French Huguenot Church, Eglise du St. Esperit, on Pine Street in

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, is preserved as a

relic In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains of a saint or the personal effects of the saint or venerated person preserved for purposes of veneration as a tangi ...

in the tower room. In 1823, it was presented to Trinity Church, New Rochelle, and hung up in the tower of the wooden church erected in 1823 - 1824.

Huguenot Burying Ground

The grounds of the church and the Parish House has a rich history that spans three centuries. On Trinity's land, three former town cemeteries now exist as one. Beginning with the first burial, that of James Bertine's daughter in 1802, a cemetery was established just west of the present Parish House and became known as the "Trinity Graveyard". Just north of the church site was the private burial ground of the Allaire family, founding members of the community. A monument to "Alexander the Huguenot" marked the plot and the grave of its first burial. Captain Allaire died in 1782, and his descendants continued to be buried in the family plot until the 1940s. The third and oldest cemetery, the Huguenot Burying Ground, was located just beyond the Allaire's at the southwest side of Division Street at the corner of Union Avenue. The plot was part of the farm of Louis Bongrand, one of the first Huguenot settlers of the Town. In 1693 he gave the plot to the future residents of New Rochelle for a churchyard to bury their dead. The land southeast of the plot was eventually acquired by Trinity Church and all boundaries between the three cemeteries were erased. The arrival of the New York-New Haven railway line in 1849 had carved its way through the village, physically splitting the two once more. A large tract church land had been acquired by Westchester County which ran along the north side of the right of way of the railroad for the route of the projected Pelham-Port Chester Parkway. Although the parkway had not yet been built, the purchase required to removal of the bodies and tombstones from it to the church land on the south side of the railroad. The old burial ground had become otherwise nearly obliterated due to a long period of neglect, the destruction of headstones, and the laying out of new plots over older, unmarked ones. By the time of construction of the

New England Thruway Interstate 95 (I-95) is part of the Interstate Highway System and runs from Miami, Florida, to the Canada–United States border near Houlton, Maine. In the U.S. state of New York, I-95 extends from the George Washington Bridge in New Yor ...

in 1956, just one of the final resting places was left to remain, with the Huguenot Burying Ground and the Allaire family cemetery being eliminated for the new six-lane highway. After much litigation and negotiation, the graves of the two cemeteries were removed, an endeavor paid for by the New England Thruway, and coordinated by Rev. Philip M. Styles of Trinity Church. The early New Rochelleans and their descendants were dug up, placed in special boxes and reburied on the church's land. Although 178 graves were opened, it is estimated that more than 400 Huguenots and Siwanoy Indian "friends" had been buried in the first cemetery. A monument in the Trinity yard marks the re-interred graves of the unknowns, and the extant stones moved along with the remains are placed nearby. The church's "Huguenot Memorial Cemetery", or "Huguenot Burying Ground", has since been recognized as an historic

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a bu ...

that is the resting place for a wide cross section of the Huguenot founders, early settlers and other prominent citizens.Robert Hershenson
Church and a Huguenot Cemetery Move Toward Landmark Status
''The New York Times'', Sunday, January 6, 1991

Gallery

TrinityStPaulsNewRochelle0001.JPG, TrinityChurch1800s.PNG,

References

External links

Trinity Parish Web site
{{New Rochelle, New York Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Episcopal church buildings in New York (state) Churches in New Rochelle, New York French-American culture in New York (state) Gothic Revival church buildings in New York (state) Churches completed in 1864 19th-century Episcopal church buildings Huguenot history in the United States Huguenot Burial Ground 1709 establishments in the Province of New York National Register of Historic Places in Westchester County, New York