History of St. Charles' Parish: Page 4
With
the new building underway the next important item to be attended to was
to secure the services of a priest. The Bishop was consulted and he gave
us the name of Frederick N. Ludtke, the Rector of St. James in West Bend
Wisconsin. Two groups of our members attended his service in West Bend
and all were very favorably impressed. As a result Fr. Ludtke was invited
to visit us in St. Charles, and I guess he was suitably impressed, since
he accepted our call. I don't know the exact date he arrived in St. Charles
but I do know that he held his first service on Sunday the 7th of October
1952.
Things proceeded apace and on Sunday the 2nd of December 1951 we held the first service in the new church, 10 days short of three years after the first service in the old church. There were 50 at the Christmas Eve service.
The next event of major importance to occur was our change in status
from a mission to a Parish. Following all the informal preparations required,
a petition had been drawn up and presented to the Bishop to change our
status from a Mission to a Parish. Consequently on 11 March 1952 the Organizational
Meeting was held. Up until that time we were known as the Church of the
Holy Rood, for the reasons discussed before. However we had become increasingly
uncomfortable with this name. No one knew what it meant and we were becoming
known as the Church of the Holy Road. So finally we prevailed on the Bishop
to allow us to change our name to St. Charles' Episcopal Church, and that
is how we were received into union with the Convention. The first vestry
was elected at that meeting and was as follows:
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And so the Parish was launched over 35 years ago.
