Christ Church Cambridge

Cambridge was a small town, a long carriage and ferry ride from Boston, when in 1759 the Church of England members who lived there petitioned Canterbury for a mission right in Cambridge. Appeal granted, the Reverend East Apthorp, a recent graduate of Jesus College at Cambridge, England, was appointed missionary. He supervised the building of the church designed by Peter Harrison, architect of the King's Chapel in Boston, and ministered to its congregation for three years before leaving the hot revolutionary climate for England.

The interior was still incomplete when the Reverend Winwood Serjeant and many of his flock fled north and to England in the summer of 1774. During the American Bicentennial parishioner John Cooolidge wrote of Christ Church:

"Hardly more than a shell when the Tories departed, it was battered during the Revolution, sympathetically restored in the Age of Jackson, extended just before the Civil War, and redecorated first during the presidency of General Grand and again during that of Herbert Hoover. Each generation has contributed something to this singularly unencumbered whole."

Although Continental troops had been billeted in the church, Martha Washington requested a service be held on Sunday 31 December 1775. Colonel Palfrey read the service and prayed that the King might be enlightened. But the Revolution rolled on and the church was closed until 1790. Not until 1829 were there funds to support a rector.

By 1857 the congregation flourising under the Reverend Nicholas Hoppin was so large that the church was lengthened by two bays. During the rectorship of the Reverend James Field Spalding the organ was moved to its present position from the loft, and the interior was redecorated in the latest fashion: cherubim and seraphinm ardorned the dark red and green walls. It was the Reverend Spalding who, on his arrival in 1879, discharged Christ Church's most famous Sunday School teacher, Theodore Roosevelt, because he remained Dutch Reformed rather than becoming an Episcopalian! This is a curious footnote to the history of a church now well known for the ecumenical interests of its recent rectors and the very diverse backgrounds of its congregation.