National Register of Historic Places, www.NRHP.focus.nps.gov

Crete, Nebraska http://www.crete-ne.com/

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Count the trees in Crete in 1875!

Crete’s Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church is one of four 1870’s wooden board and batten Gothic churches extant in Nebraska, and is significant as one of the oldest church buildings in the state.

The first Episcopalian services were held in Crete in 1871, just a few months after the town’s founding. A parish was formally organized in 1872, and the Episcopalians resolved that same year to build a church. Nebraska’s first Episcopal bishop, the Right Reverend R. H. Clarkson, had at his disposal $2,000 donated by two sisters, Kate and Helen Dater of New York City, for the building of a frontier church. The money was to be given to a parish that would raise $1,000 to build a rectory. Bishop Clarkson selected the fledgling Crete parish as recipient of the donation, and Trinity Memorial Church was built in 1872. The building received additions in 1889 and 1896. An examination of the floor plan and elevations following the 1896 additions reveals that Trinity Church’s appendages, and perhaps the initial construction, were most probably based on Plates 1, 2 and 3 “Wooden Church” in Richard Upjohn’s important 1852 publication, Upjohn’s Rural Architecture. The book contained drawings for inexpensive, practical modern wooden church buildings which could be economically built on the frontier. Upjohn’s work spawned a significant group of quality 19^th Century American churches reflecting vernacular versions of the Gothic style imported from England, coupled with the board and batten siding made popular by Upjohn and others. Trinity Memorial Church features lancet, or pointed-arch windows, two-tiered ornamental buttresses, and a quatrefoil window in the vestibule gable. The earliest portion of the church is comprised of the first four bays of the nave. To increase seating, a fifth bay was added in 1889, and in 1896 the vestibule, chancel and sacristy were adjoined. The bays are defined on the side walls by the non-functional buttresses that were not part of the original 1872 construction.

The interior of the church is virtually unaltered; however the walls, floor and ceiling are covered with non-original materials. A photograph, published in an 1889 church newsletter, shows that the ceiling was originally covered with narrow boards laid horizontally, and the walls were covered with thin strips of wood placed diagonally within simulated half-timbered sections. The wide-beaded wainscot, installed in 1896, is still intact along the lower wall under the windows. An ogee arch – created of reversed curves – was built in 1896 and separates the nave and the chancel. A rood beam inscribed with a scriptural verse was placed above the choir crossing in 1905.

Trinity Memorial was attended by several of Crete’s early founders, including miller and banker J.R. Johnston, Judge William Morris and hotel owner Henry Code. Peak membership and substantial parish activity took place in the 1880s and 1890s.*

Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The National Register is the nation’s list of cultural resources deemed worthy of preservation. A division of the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, the program is administered in Nebraska by the State Historical Society.

Author of this history, minus the asterisk at the end of the penultimate paragraph, is Janet Jeffries Beauvais, Archivist at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska.

I added the asterisk. My grandmother,Elizabeth Harvey, born in Ottawa, Illinois, was not baptized at Trinity Memorial, but her younger sisters Lottie McFarland Harvey and Lucy Morrison Harvey were baptized here in 1884. Brother James Bascomb Harvey was baptized at Trinity Memorial in 1886. The Harvey family lived 10 miles from Crete in Wilber, Nebraska, where they owned and operated a grain mill. The trip to Trinity Memorial that my great grandparents and their children made by carriage must have been quite long and trying. (My great grandparents, Charles and Mary Thomson Morrison Harvey, died in 1893 and 1898, both in their early 40s.)

When I was a child, services at Trinity Memorial were in the late afternoon, as we shared a priest with at least one other small town’s church. (We attended Methodist Sunday School in the morning, and Mother sang in the choir for the morning service.) For the afternoon Episcopal service, my mother directed the choir until her death in 1948.

I lived away from Crete from 1955 to 1999, and since I’ve been back here have been connected to Trinity Memorial and the Saints of God, living and dead, who worship and worshiped here.

I hope that you will visit us in person on any Sunday morning for the 10:45 a.m. services. We are just 14 miles south of Interstate 80, a dozen miles west of Lincoln. We invite and welcome all to worship with us.

Jody Kerssenbrock

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Community garden

Summer finds us with Vacation Bible School; for the past 4 years we have been building summer faith formation programs for youngsters.  Please contact jk42241@windstream.net for the dates and times in 2009.

Vacation Bible School 06

Pastor Arturo Ornelas  (402) 840 1714

7 PM Miércoles

2 PM Domingo

Services: Sundays, 10:45 AM
Holy Eucharist on Second and Fourth Sundays
Rev. Dr. Steve Lahey, Priest-in-Charge
Morning Prayer on other Sundays

We joyfully share our church with a Hispanic congregation, Iglesia de Jesu Christo.  Click their name for information.

The church sponsors a Community Garden .  Go to the Congregation section for more information.

Summer finds us with Vacation Bible School; for the past 4 years we have been building summer faith formation programs for youngsters. Please contact us for the dates and times for this in 2009.  Go to the Congregation section for more information.

Winter festivities include a Festival of Lessons and Carols which is traditionally held the first Sunday in Advent at 7 p.m.  All of our services are open to the public, but this traditional English service is our main “public” religious offering, enjoyed by many from all denominations.  The church is charming and festive.  The food at the reception after Lessons and Carols is delicious.  Please come.  You will be glad you did.

Christmas Eve service at Trinity Memorial is at 7 p.m. on December 24^th; this takes the place of the Christmas morning service. We invite and welcome all to come to this beautiful service in our little church.