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CLEVELAND, OHIO
ESTABLISHED IN AUGUST OF 1857, ST. JAMES' ANGLICAN WAS Cleveland's fifth Episcopal parish. Initial membership was drawn primarily from Trinity and St. Paul's churches; in fact, St. James' was a originally mission of Trinity Church (now Cathedral). Early worship took place in a public school on St. Clair Street, east of Case Avenue. The first church building, completed in 1865, was located at Superior Avenue and Alabama Street (now East 26th Street).
With the neighborhood increasingly populated by immigrant Catholics, St. James' parishioners themselves migrated eastward, such that the Vestry decided in July of 1886 to sell the Superior Street property and move "uptown." In 1889 the Missionary Committee made great note that St. James' had neither home nor rector, services nor Sunday School. Thus, the Standing Committee of the Diocese requested the parish dissolved and the property turned over to the Diocese. Showing a strain of independence that would become a parish hallmark, the Vestry of St. James' nevertheless pushed on with plans for a new church. On July 7, 1890, the cornerstone was set for the present stone edifice, designed by H. B. Smith; though never carried out, the plans allowed for a nave more than twice its present 52' length.
Under the first rector, The Reverend Theodore Clinton Foote, many Anglo-Catholic practices were instituted that continue to this day. Beginning in 1900, three paid singers were employed. Anew rector in 1905, the Reverend Guy L. Wallis, dismissed the choir, believing the congregation should sing the Gregorian chants on its own. To further curb any notion of choral leadership, Wallis even advised the Vestry "to remove the Choir Gallery from the Church," a measure approved at Father Wallis' last meeting. Independent as ever, the Vestry never followed through with the modification. Much later, with the Episcopal Church's decision to ordain female clergy in 1976, St. James' formalized its separation from the Episcopal Church on May 28, 1978, joining the Anglican Diocese of the Midwest (Columbus, Ohio), a part of the Anglican Church of North America. The Episcopal Diocese of Ohio gave clear title to all parish property to the rector, wardens, and vestry of St. James'.
St. James' early organ history is difficult to trace. A pipe organ was in...