[PAST EVENT] Talk on the Rev. Charles Minnigerode, spritual advisor to Jefferson Davis

April 26, 2015
3pm - 4:15pm
Location
Parish Hall, St. Martin's Episcopal Church, 1333 Jamestown Rd
God's Wayward Boy: The Life and Times of The Rev. Charles Minnigerode

Virginia's most prominent Civil War clergyman, The Rev. Charles Minnigerode of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Richmond, began his career as a social and political revolutionary in his native Germany, where he spent five years incarcerated for sedition before fleeing to Philadelphia in 1839. Landing a classical language professorship at William and Mary in 1842, he sojourned six years in Williamsburg, where he married, embraced the Southern way of life, and received ordination to the diaconate and priesthood at Bruton Parish Church. There he ran the Sunday school for enslaved children. Minnigerode received his first diocesan assignment as missionary priest to the struggling Episcopal congregation at Yorktown, where he threw himself into fundraising and saw to the construction and consecration of Grace Church within the ruinous walls of the colonial Yorkhampton Parish church building.

Celebrated each holiday season today as the man who introduced the Christmas tree to Virginia at the St. George Tucker House in Williamsburg, Charles Minnigerode's ultimate notoriety derived from his intimate friendship with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, his wartime ministry to Robert E. Lee and numerous other Confederate military and civilian notables, and his steadying presence during the evacuation of Richmond in April 1865.
Contact

Terry Meyers, English [[tlmeye]] 221-3932