The Rev. Mr. Otey was a young missionary priest and a school master who had come recently from Warrenton. He was Mrs. Gloster’s godson and Mr. Anderson’s good friend. He was to become the first Bishop of Tennessee.

His intervention brought another missionary priest, the Rev. Mr. Thomas Wright from New York, and in 1832 Immanuel Church was organized. Later that same year Immanuel’s Rev. Mr. Wright helped establish Episcopal Churches in Jackson, Brownsville and Randolph, and Calvary in Memphis.

As La Grange continued to thrive, Memphis, 50 miles to the west, was generally considered a rowdy river town. For decades more sophisticated Memphians were to come to La Grange by horseback, or horse drawn conveyance, and later by the old Memphis and Charleston Railway, to shop and attend schools and cultural events. It was during this period of high promise and prosperity that the present Immanuel building was erected on Gloster-Anderson land by slave labor with handmade bricks and hand-hewn timbers from nearby virgin forest lands. The present building was consecrated by Bishop Otey in 1843. It is in the classical style of rural English village churches and, more specifically, an exact copy of the Gloster family’s former Immanuel Church in Warrenton.

La Grange was occupied by Union forces from the time of the fall of Memphis on June 13, 1862, until the end of the Civil War. Immanuel was confiscated as an ordnance depot, and later used as a Union Hospital. The building was terribly abused. The pews and chancel furniture were used to make coffins for the Union dead.

La Grange never fully recovered from the rigors of war, reconstruction and a changing economic order, but the Church survived. Soon after the war’s end, the first of many periodic restorations of Immanuel was begun. The latest, undertaken in the 1950’s, was completed in 1977. A fake ceiling, which had been added earlier in the century was removed and the old slave gallery, only one of two in existence in the country, was restored. Original light fixtures were wired for electricity; copies of the original mullioned windows have been installed; the original stucco façade restored; and refinishing has revealed the beauty of the heart of walnut used for the altar, pulpit, lectern and Bishop’s chair. Heating, plumbing and air conditioning were also installed.

Recent initiatives include completion of the cemetery and columbarium, the restoration of the wood mould brick walkway to the entrance of Immanuel, the ongoing restoration of exterior shutters, the stabilization of floor joists, replacing the Church roof, adding a well, an evergreen screen on the south side of the property, building a new Steeple Cross to stand tall above the church, and the addition of the beautiful Steinway piano to our worship space. Major interior and exterior restorations are underway in 2021.

Ever guided and impelled by the same spirit, vision and sense of mission that led to its founding, Immanuel Church, La Grange, Tennessee, is a living tribute to our Episcopal heritage, and it is a vital spiritual inspiration that touches and influences the lives of many throughout our Diocese and across our country.

Information Regarding Immanuel Episcopal’s Historical Sunday School Book Collection

Research by Meredith Stewart 2022

Much has been written about the Sunday School Movement in America. The Episcopal Church’s website tells us:

The first Episcopal Sunday Church School was opened in 1790 by James Milnor and Jackson Kemper at the United Parish of Christ Church and St. Peter’s, Philadelphia. William White was rector of the United Parish at that time. The Sunday School in the Episcopal Church became a conscious instrument for religious edition in 1826 with the organization of the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union. Its focus was catechetical, and its energy arose from the nineteenth-century evangelical impulse.

The webpage of the Library of Union Presbyterian Seminary provided a brief overview of the Sunday School Movement and nineteenth century Sunday School books:

One of the most important developments in American Protestantism in the 19th century was the rise of the American Sunday School movement. In the 1790’s, the first American Sunday Schools were modeled on British schools founded by Robert Raikes, Hannah More and others, to teach reading and writing to poor children in the cities on their only day free from work, and to reform their morals.

By the 1820’s American Sunday Schools had become democratized to include children from all social classes, not only the urban poor. At the same time the purpose of the schools became more focused on religious instruction in evangelical Protestant doctrines and more concerned with conversion of the young.

In the 1830’s the Sunday School movement, which had begun as an eastern and urban institution, rapidly expanded into rural and western frontier areas. In many cases the Sunday School served as a vehicle for introducing religious services in places lacking any other religious institutions.

A powerful adjunct to the 19th century Sunday School was the Sunday School library. It is estimated that several million small books were produced for the Sunday Schools between 1820 and 1880. The largest publishing houses for these books were the American Sunday School Union, the American Tract Society, and denominational publishers…[for example, the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union].

Sunday School books in the nineteenth century encompassed a remarkable range of topics There were numerous aids and inducements to Bible study: Bible dictionaries, Bible stories and scripture biographies; biblical chronology, geography and natural history; and selections for memorization and Bible questions and answers for Sunday School examinations and catechisms. There were accounts of missions and missionaries and ‘heathen’ converts, church history, as well as biographies of the church leaders. There were books of religious verse, hymnals, and picture books. A genre characteristic of the 19th century included biographies of pious children and many accounts of the pious dying of young and old. There were descriptions of American Indians and of life and customs in remote parts of the world. Other topics included slavery, immigration, child labor, orphans, poverty, and temperance.

Above all, there were ‘moral tales’ - entertaining stories with a wide variety of settings, characters and plots, all employed to teach moral conduct, ethics, Christian development and good citizenship. The dual purpose of entertaining and instructing is often suggested in the books’ titles and subtitles. [For example: Light in the Window; or the Widow and Her Son and Daisy’s Work: The Third Commandment.]

Of the approximately 250 books in the collection of Immanuel Church La Grange, 45 books were published by the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union; 24 by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; 21 by the American Sunday School Union; and 30 by Robert Carter and Brothers, a firm whose main output was religious titles and books for juveniles. These publishing houses strived to make their publications accessible to as many people as possible. To this end, many authors, artists and workers contributed their efforts at no cost. These publishers in turn provided their literature at cost or, when possible, for free. Eventually, they even began to produce “libraries” of books that could be purchased at a reduced rate by schools and thus provide free circulation to small rural communities. In the Immanuel collection the “library” of books from the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union are recognizable by their similar bindings and spine labels.

Glancing down the list of  books in the Immanuel collection, one definitely finds the range of topics mentioned in the essay above.  In addition to these Sunday School topics, other books were given to Immanuel and often include owners’ names.  The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone, inscribed by R.J. Hatton of La Grange, is one such example. There are a number of prayer books, hymnals and books of verse. A favorite author of the Immanuel Sunday School seems to be Ms. Joanna Mathews with 25 individual titles. A biographer says of Mathews, “At a time when many authors were moving away from proselytizing child protagonists, Joanna created characters who frequently spoke about their faith and influenced others yet also engaged in childish play and sometimes misbehaved.” (Deirdre Johnson, 2019)

Two different bookplates were mounted in the majority of the books: Immanuel S.S. La Grange Tenn and a simpler Immanuel Church Library.  Many have Immanuel Church La Grange Tenn inscribed in ink or pencil in beautiful script.  There are books with children’s scribbles. A simple numbering system was used but it is not known if it corresponds to a chronology of acquisition. The Immanuel Church Library bookplate indicates that it was a lending library and there is a short ledger book [to be retained by the Church] which records the names of borrowers.

Physically most of the books are small (better to fit small hands) and illustrated. It is obvious that the library was popular - most of the books are well worn and some are in poor condition. The books which were lovingly covered by handmade and hand-sewn dustjackets in thick paper or 19th century cotton cloth have survived in better condition and their covers remain bright and clean underneath.