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The following is adapted from a speech written by Charles Ffolliott on January 30, 1987. Many thanks to Don Elander for retrieving it from his archive for all of us to share. I imagine that many of you will be surprised to learn that there was an Episcopal Church in St. Charles before the Civil War more than 150 years ago. In 1839 a church was organized and was admitted to the convention. It was called St. Pauls. Unfortunately it died out, and in 1852 a Swedish clergyman trained at Nashotah, organized a congregation called St. Erics, which was also admitted to the convention, and which was visited by the Bishop in 1853. But it died out and in 1855 the English work was resumed and St. Erics building was purchased and renamed St. Pauls. The building would seat about 100 but in 1855 they had only 10 communicants and 15 in the Sunday School with a total of only 8 families. But the last time St. Pauls appeared in the list of congregations was 1857. And so, for the next 130 years, any Episcopalians in St. Charles had to go to either Geneva or Elgin. I am not entirely sure when talk of organizing a church in St. Charles began, but the first I heard of it was late in February 1948 when Dean Williams of Glen Ellyn mentioned it to me. At that time we went to Batavia but I believe most of the others in St. Charles went to Geneva. Things proceeded in the conversational way until the end of April, when we saw Dean Williams suggestion, we called the Bishop and had a meeting with him on Friday the 7th. The result of this meeting was that the Bishop said he would support the establishment of a Mission in St. Charles, and, more importantly, he would support it with money. We found that instead of contributing small amounts of money at intervals, it was his policy to provide a new Mission with a substantial sum of money to purchase a church to start with. In this way we were able to start with a building but from there on we were on our own. During the next few months we were very busy with an informal organization and with finding a suitable building. The Bishop eventually purchased the house on the south west corner of Walnut and Sixth for $12,500.00. Finally on Tuesday the 14th of September 1948, the Bishop came to us and we had an organizational meeting in the new church building. At this meeting the Bishop told of his long time desire to have a church in St. Charles and that he had discussed it with Fr. Holt before Fr. Holt came to Geneva and he was delighted that his hopes were now being realized. The first thing to do was to petition the Bishop to establish the mission. In as much as the petition had not been prepared, a paper was circulated and 34 of those present signed it. Of those original 34 only five of us are here tonight, and only three are active members of this Parish. (This paper was later attached to the petition and sent to the Bishop who approved it on 30 September 1948.) The next order of business was the selection of The Finance Committee which, in a mission, corresponds to the Vestry in a Parish. The Bishop then appointed Drew Green, Julia Whitmar, Elmer Rullman and me, and asked that we submit six or eight additional names to be added later. The additional names were Marion Simpson, Earl Whiteway, Roy Richards, P.H. Bollenbeck, Frank Schmidt, Dale Griffin, and Charles Redmond.