In 1867 a New York architect sent the plans for a new church in Belle Plaine to Bishop Whipple. The church was built in 1868 on land contributed by Territorial Judge Andrew G. Chatfield, founder of Belle Plaine. The congregation organized in 1858 and peaked in 1871, when the Parochial Report to the Diocese showed 16 families with a total of 70 members.
In the 1860s and 1870s immigrants were coming to the Minnesota River Valley in large numbers from Germany, Ireland and Czechoslovakia. These Lutherans and Roman Catholics brought their own clergy and formed ethnic churches having no need for an English - speaking Episcopal Church. For some, the Episcopal Church had an aristocratic image that made it seem incompatible with frontier life. The congregation slowly dwindled and disbanded in the 1950s.
The architecture of the church is Prairie Gothic. Pointed arches, a steeply gabled roof, and functional buttresses made out of wood characterized this architectural style. The Episcopal Church's employment of Gothic architecture, popular at the time, symbolized tradition and history in the newly settled Minnesota River Valley.
Erected in 1999
Scott County Historical Society
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