Week 5 - Christ Church Buildings and Material Culture 

The first Christ Church building was at the corner of Church and Sixth streets. Architect Hugh Roland designed the Gothic structure. The cornerstone was laid in 1830, and the church was consecrated almost exactly a year later. For a more detailed account of the founding and building of the church, see Fletch Coke’s history, found here. 

Beginning in the 1870s as Nashville’s population grew, church leaders recognized that the building was too small. In 1883, the vestry purchased the lot on which the current church stands. Architect Frances Hatch Kimball designed the building, and groundbreaking happened in 1890, though delays related to the cost of the building and a financial depression delayed its completion until Advent of 1894. Later additions to the Victorian Gothic church were the tower (1947) and chimes (1949). Again, Fletch Coke’s history provides more details about the architecture and building of the church.

An important question regarding the building and interior decoration of the 1831 and 1894 churches is the identity of the craftspeople and laborers who built the structures and crafted sacred objects. We do know that out of 52 original pew renters of the 1831 church, at least 22 owned enslaved people at the time of the 1850 census. This number has been derived from searches of the 1850 census, which are not yet complete; the number is likely higher. 

Many of the church furnishings were given as gifts and memorials in 1894, when the second building was completed. You can view a full list here.

There are several items that have clear connections to the destructive institution of slavery. Two brass urns given in 1894 by a formerly enslaved woman named Lavinia or “Aunt Viney” (no last name known) bear the inscription “'In Memory of my Mistis Mrs. Thomas Washington,” using dialect for the term “mistress” used by white enslavers. A Davidson County Deed Book lists the purchase of an enslaved woman named Lavinia, at that time in her mid 20s, in 1835 by the Washington family. We assume, but can’t know for sure, that it is the same person. If so, she would have been in her 90s at the time of the gift. It is difficult to know the nature of the relationship between Mrs. Mary Washington and Lavinia. While they may have had true bonds of affection, it was also common in the 1890s for people to cite such relationships as a way to soften the image of slavery, portraying the institution as benevolent. The urns are still used on Palm Sundays to hold palm fronds. 

Katherine Polk Gale, daughter of Bishop (and Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army) Leonidas Polk, was an active member of Christ Church after the Civil War. She gave a bronze altar book stand in memory of her three children for the  1894 church. Her memoir, Recollections of Life in the Southern Confederacy, has numerous notes of enslaved people owned by the Polk family in Nashville, New Orleans, North Carolina, and Mississippi. The Polk family’s papers, including Recollections, have been digitized by UNC and can be read here. The altar book stand is in storage at the Cathedral, no longer in use.

• How did the fact that many Christ Church founders owned enslaved people affect the labor used to build the 1830 church? What role did enslaved laborers play during the building of the first Christ Church, from July 1830 to July 1831? What about free Black craftsmen?

• What role did Black laborers and craftspeople play in the building of our current church building, consecrated in 1894?

• What can items of material culture in the church (urns, stained glass windows, etc.) tell us about how enslaved people experienced Christ Church?

• How can we make our records readily available to researchers?