St. Luke's Episcopal Church is located in Denison, Texas; a town situated four miles south of the Red River and approximately seventy-five miles north of Dallas. Its sanctuary is the oldest house of worship in Grayson County, an urban area composed of the contiguous cities of Denison and Sherman. Together, with their suburbs, these two towns comprise a metropolitan area of approximately one hundred thousand people.
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company founded the town of Denison in 1872. Cotton planters who were suspicious of railroad development had settled Sherman, an older town immediately to the south, prior to the Civil War. The M.K.T. Railroad Company wanted to locate its facilities there in the early 1870s, but the residents of Sherman rejected it. The company thereupon founded Denison nearby to serve as its base of operations. Named for a vice president of the M.K.T. line, the city of Denison existed from the 1870s to the 1980s as one of the most important railroad centers in Texas. It was the operational headquarters of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad for over one hundred years until the "Katy," as the line was nicknamed, became part of the Union Pacific system. Other rail lines, including the Texas and Pacific, the Houston and Texas Central, and the Frisco, passed through the city.
Denison prospered quickly from the moment of its founding in 1872 since it had powerful railroad interests behind its creation. The Denison Town Company, headed by former railroad officers W. B. Munson and R. S. Stevens, supervised the surveying and settlement of the town, which grew so quickly that it became a city of almost 3000 thousand people within a few months. Denison rapidly became a ribald Texas frontier town composed of cowboys, gambling dens, and saloons, the latter of which grew up around the bustling railroad yards that specialized in the packing and shipping of cattle. Early Denison newspapers of that era were filled with news of shootings, fistfights, and other seamy occurrences along the town’s dusty front street.
Denison also attracted from the moment of its founding a solid and sober business element that eventually tamed the town, making it one of the prosperous commercial centers of the region. St. Luke's Episcopal Church was solidly in the center of that civilizing process. The Reverend Edwin Wickes, an Episcopal priest from Dallas's Church of the Incarnation, visited Denison about six months after Munson and Stevens platted the original street plans. Reverend Wickes found a scrambling settlement that was rapidly converting itself from a tent city to one of solid brick storefronts, many of which still grace the historic areas of downtown. He stayed in the recently built home of Mrs. Ellen Chilton, a former parishioner from Dallas. Mrs. Chilton convinced Reverend Wickes to offer the Holy Eucharist in a series of public worship services during Lent of 1873. Several dozen people gathered that spring for the first Episcopal service held in Denison. Although the only location they could find large enough for their number was in a local gambling hall, all in attendance were reverently optimistic as they anticipated fulfilling their spiritual needs. These services by Reverend Wickes motivated Episcopalians in Denison to found a Parish for themselves during the remainder of 1873.
A group of them banded together, selected officers known as the "Wardens of St. Luke's Episcopal Church," and approached the Denison Town Company for a grant of land upon which to construct a church building. On May 7, 1873, the Town Company gave the Wardens two town lots on the corner of Woodard and Fannin Streets, part of the property upon which the parish is still located today. Later, on November 27, 1873, these Wardens incorporated themselves with an article of association that created the parish as a legal entity under the civil statutes of Texas. In so doing, the Wardens pledged as the officers of the association to serve the Christian community of Denison as a whole while observing Anglican traditions in their own worship service. As plans went forward for the construction of a building, the Wardens engaged the services of Reverend E. W. Gilliam to offer services in Denison. Reverend Gilliam was Rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, founded the previous year and located ten miles to the south in Sherman. For several years thereafter, Reverend Gilliam was "yoked" between St. Luke's and St. Stephen's as both parishes shared his services.
Incredible as it may seem, the organization of St. Luke's Church occurred in 1873 without any contact with or support from a diocese. Technically, Denison fell within the confines of the Diocese of Texas, whose Bishop was located at the other end of the state in Houston. Distances were go great that the Bishop of Texas had little interest in events at Denison, Sherman, and Dallas, or with the other northern parts of the state. The General Convention of 1874 in New York City remedied this ecclesiastical isolation for north Texas. It split the area away from the Diocese of Texas, creating the Missionary District of North Texas under the direction of the Reverend Alexander Garrett, who would later serve as the First Bishop of Dallas and the fourteenth Presiding Bishop of the National Church.
Reverend Garrett embarked on an inspection tour of his new district and visited Denison in early 1875 to meet with the thriving group of Episcopalians who had already organized St. Luke's. The church in Denison, although unaffiliated with a Diocese, was functioning as a Parish, owned real property, and was in the process of building its sanctuary by virtue of the legal existence provided by its civil articles of association. Bishop Garrett moved quickly to legitimize this state of affairs ecclesiastically by approving St. Luke's as a mission on February 5, 1875. Then, several months later at the first opportunity, Garrett elevated the church to full status as a parish in the Missionary District of North Texas. This chain of events has given St. Luke's an unusual financial relationship to the diocese that has continued to the present day. Unlike most Episcopal parishes, the Vestry of St. Luke's (as the legal successors of the incorporating Wardens) holds title in fee simple to all of the Parish's real estate, while the parish finance committee oversees endowment funds, which belong solely to the Vestry operating independently from the diocese under the 1873 articles of association.
St. Luke's elevation to formal parish status, coupled to the continuing growth of Denison, brought energy to the congregation. Reverend Garrett laid the cornerstone for the new church building in late 1875 as construction progressed into the next spring. Although not fully complete, the congregation began using the sanctuary with the arrival of warm weather and Reverend Garrett returned to consecrate the new building on April 23, 1876. That historic sanctuary, although slightly remodeled over the decades, is still in use by the parish today. In addition to meeting the spiritual needs of its parishioners, St. Luke's also moved to provide Christian fellowship for its communicants. It soon had a Women's Guild, an outreach Auxiliary, and a "well-organized and graded" Sunday school for its children. It also began an outreach ministry designed, in part, to help civilize Denison away from its existence as a boisterous railroad town on the cattle frontier. Parishioners opened a mission near the railroad yards in a rowdy area known as "Skiddy Row." Here, they offered religious services and material assistance to those in need. Early parish registers accordingly note the baptizing of "fallen women" and the Christian burial of those who died by "foul gunplay."
St. Luke's, by the end of the nineteenth century, had become a congregation of one hundred fifty communicants. The parish attracted as members a diverse group of parishioners. They represented the cosmopolitan nature of Denison as a regional transportation and commercial center. Employees of the Railroad Company, teachers, attorneys, physicians, and business people found their way to the parish. In some cases, the great-grandchildren of these early parishioners are present-day communicants at St. Luke's. In 1896, St. Luke's joined with thirteen other parishes in the North Texas area to form the Diocese of Dallas. Delegates from the parish to that convention eagerly joined with their colleagues in electing Alexander Garrett as the first Bishop of Dallas. Bishop Garrett was always held in special regard at St. Luke's. His photograph and a formal portrait of him is proudly displayed in the Chapel. Indeed, Bishop Garrett continued to preach at St. Luke's on his regular Episcopal visits until his death in 1924.
The early decades of this century saw both Denison and St. Luke's stabilize in terms of growth. For the most part, the parish has had from 150 to 200 communicants on its rolls since the era of World War One to the present, aside from a transitory period of expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1920s and 1930s were particularly lean years for Denison as the cattle trade shifted from Texas to Chicago while the entire nation was thereafter gripped by the Great Depression. The discovery of oil and gas in Grayson County, however, did soften some of the serious economic impacts of the depression locally, at least when compared to other areas of the country. The World War Two years brought a return of prosperity to Denison. In 1939, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began construction on Denison Dam, a major floor control project that created Lake Texoma, which exists today as one of the largest recreational lakes in the southwestern United States. Several months after Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps opened Perrin Field as a pilot training center. This base remained operational until the early 1970s and, during the post war years, it functioned as a major Air Force facility.
The ensuring prosperity from these events was reflected at St. Luke's in 1942 with the construction of Frank Hughes Hall and the remodeling of the main church building. Originally, Hughes Hall contained a fellowship hall, kitchen facilities, almost a dozen Sunday school rooms, and an office for the priest. Today, after an extensive modernization and remodeling, it houses the parish offices, a small chapel, and facilities for the Altar Guild, and several classrooms. The postwar World War Two years saw continued growth at St. Luke's. In many ways, the modern history of St. Luke's dates from the respective tenures as Rector of Reverend David A. Jones and his successor, Reverend A. Harrison Lee. Their period as rectors runs from 1952 until 1970. During these years, the number of parishioners reached an all-time high for the parish while the church engaged in a wide variety of activities and ministries. Reverend Lee celebrated the Holy Eucharist during three services each Sunday, held a Morning Prayer service each day of the week, and offered an additional Holy Eucharist each Wednesday afternoon in the chapel at Perrin Air Force Base.
Luke's Parish Day School opened in 1959 during this period of expansion, providing kindergarten through early elementary education for children in Grayson County. Over the years, St. Luke's School has prospered and grown. The school has about 50 students, employs a full-time Headmaster, a full office staff, and teachers offering instruction from pre-kindergarten through pre-k 4. The St. Luke's Day School, although legally owned by the parish, operates as a separate entity, keeping distinct financial accounts. The parish does provide regular in-kind and monetary support for the school. The Vestry makes all significant policy and financial decisions for the school. The majority of the children in attendance do not come from families in the parish. The school is tuition-driven, although some students do attend on scholarship. The National Association of Episcopal Schools accredits it.
The founding of St. Luke's School marked a period of unusual and uncharacteristic prosperity in the history of the parish. This was due the fact that the 1960s witnessed an expansion of Denison's economic base. Perrin Air Force Base functioned at capacity while various industries relocated to the city because of increasingly convenient highway access to Dallas, one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas. Indeed, starting in the 1960s, the entire north Texas region comprehended by the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex enjoyed phenomenal economic and population growth. Denison, although on the northern periphery of development, attracted food processing plants, various light manufacturing operations, and regional health care facilities, all of which became important to the local economy. Many of St. Luke's current parishioners came to the area as part of this economic and demographic growth, some of which has continued to the present day.
Nonetheless, the 1970s and early 1980s became a difficult time for St. Luke's as Denison suffered several devastating economic reversals. Perrin Air Force base closed in 1971, creating a ripple effect that removed several thousand jobs from the local economy. Then, as a drastic decline in domestic oil prices during the early 1980s decimated the entire Texas economy, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company fell on hard times. It eventually merged into the Union Pacific Company, closing its operational headquarters and major yard facilities in Denison. Like other churches in Denison, St. Luke's had parishioners whose employment was directly affected by these closings. As well, the pressures and frustrations surrounding these difficulties were manifested by various controversies in the parish. One rector during the 1970s left the Episcopal Church to become a Roman Catholic while another departed to found a nearby mission station.
In the Mid 1980’s, the Vestry completed an ambitious building program that resulted in the construction of Kohfeldt Hall, a facility that almost doubled the size of the parish physical plant. Kohfeldt Hall contains a choir room, administration offices, a large fellowship hall, and an industrial sized kitchen. This construction project also included the building of a large parking lot and extensive landscaping of the parish grounds. Gregg House, which was at that time home to the Day School, was also refurbished while Hughes Hall underwent a complete remodeling. At this writing, Father Jacob Nichols is the Rector of St. Luke’s Church. St. Luke's just celebrated its 150th Anniversary in 2023, dating from its incorporation by the Church Wardens in 1873.
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company founded the town of Denison in 1872. Cotton planters who were suspicious of railroad development had settled Sherman, an older town immediately to the south, prior to the Civil War. The M.K.T. Railroad Company wanted to locate its facilities there in the early 1870s, but the residents of Sherman rejected it. The company thereupon founded Denison nearby to serve as its base of operations. Named for a vice president of the M.K.T. line, the city of Denison existed from the 1870s to the 1980s as one of the most important railroad centers in Texas. It was the operational headquarters of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad for over one hundred years until the "Katy," as the line was nicknamed, became part of the Union Pacific system. Other rail lines, including the Texas and Pacific, the Houston and Texas Central, and the Frisco, passed through the city.
Denison prospered quickly from the moment of its founding in 1872 since it had powerful railroad interests behind its creation. The Denison Town Company, headed by former railroad officers W. B. Munson and R. S. Stevens, supervised the surveying and settlement of the town, which grew so quickly that it became a city of almost 3000 thousand people within a few months. Denison rapidly became a ribald Texas frontier town composed of cowboys, gambling dens, and saloons, the latter of which grew up around the bustling railroad yards that specialized in the packing and shipping of cattle. Early Denison newspapers of that era were filled with news of shootings, fistfights, and other seamy occurrences along the town’s dusty front street.
Denison also attracted from the moment of its founding a solid and sober business element that eventually tamed the town, making it one of the prosperous commercial centers of the region. St. Luke's Episcopal Church was solidly in the center of that civilizing process. The Reverend Edwin Wickes, an Episcopal priest from Dallas's Church of the Incarnation, visited Denison about six months after Munson and Stevens platted the original street plans. Reverend Wickes found a scrambling settlement that was rapidly converting itself from a tent city to one of solid brick storefronts, many of which still grace the historic areas of downtown. He stayed in the recently built home of Mrs. Ellen Chilton, a former parishioner from Dallas. Mrs. Chilton convinced Reverend Wickes to offer the Holy Eucharist in a series of public worship services during Lent of 1873. Several dozen people gathered that spring for the first Episcopal service held in Denison. Although the only location they could find large enough for their number was in a local gambling hall, all in attendance were reverently optimistic as they anticipated fulfilling their spiritual needs. These services by Reverend Wickes motivated Episcopalians in Denison to found a Parish for themselves during the remainder of 1873.
A group of them banded together, selected officers known as the "Wardens of St. Luke's Episcopal Church," and approached the Denison Town Company for a grant of land upon which to construct a church building. On May 7, 1873, the Town Company gave the Wardens two town lots on the corner of Woodard and Fannin Streets, part of the property upon which the parish is still located today. Later, on November 27, 1873, these Wardens incorporated themselves with an article of association that created the parish as a legal entity under the civil statutes of Texas. In so doing, the Wardens pledged as the officers of the association to serve the Christian community of Denison as a whole while observing Anglican traditions in their own worship service. As plans went forward for the construction of a building, the Wardens engaged the services of Reverend E. W. Gilliam to offer services in Denison. Reverend Gilliam was Rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, founded the previous year and located ten miles to the south in Sherman. For several years thereafter, Reverend Gilliam was "yoked" between St. Luke's and St. Stephen's as both parishes shared his services.
Incredible as it may seem, the organization of St. Luke's Church occurred in 1873 without any contact with or support from a diocese. Technically, Denison fell within the confines of the Diocese of Texas, whose Bishop was located at the other end of the state in Houston. Distances were go great that the Bishop of Texas had little interest in events at Denison, Sherman, and Dallas, or with the other northern parts of the state. The General Convention of 1874 in New York City remedied this ecclesiastical isolation for north Texas. It split the area away from the Diocese of Texas, creating the Missionary District of North Texas under the direction of the Reverend Alexander Garrett, who would later serve as the First Bishop of Dallas and the fourteenth Presiding Bishop of the National Church.
Reverend Garrett embarked on an inspection tour of his new district and visited Denison in early 1875 to meet with the thriving group of Episcopalians who had already organized St. Luke's. The church in Denison, although unaffiliated with a Diocese, was functioning as a Parish, owned real property, and was in the process of building its sanctuary by virtue of the legal existence provided by its civil articles of association. Bishop Garrett moved quickly to legitimize this state of affairs ecclesiastically by approving St. Luke's as a mission on February 5, 1875. Then, several months later at the first opportunity, Garrett elevated the church to full status as a parish in the Missionary District of North Texas. This chain of events has given St. Luke's an unusual financial relationship to the diocese that has continued to the present day. Unlike most Episcopal parishes, the Vestry of St. Luke's (as the legal successors of the incorporating Wardens) holds title in fee simple to all of the Parish's real estate, while the parish finance committee oversees endowment funds, which belong solely to the Vestry operating independently from the diocese under the 1873 articles of association.
St. Luke's elevation to formal parish status, coupled to the continuing growth of Denison, brought energy to the congregation. Reverend Garrett laid the cornerstone for the new church building in late 1875 as construction progressed into the next spring. Although not fully complete, the congregation began using the sanctuary with the arrival of warm weather and Reverend Garrett returned to consecrate the new building on April 23, 1876. That historic sanctuary, although slightly remodeled over the decades, is still in use by the parish today. In addition to meeting the spiritual needs of its parishioners, St. Luke's also moved to provide Christian fellowship for its communicants. It soon had a Women's Guild, an outreach Auxiliary, and a "well-organized and graded" Sunday school for its children. It also began an outreach ministry designed, in part, to help civilize Denison away from its existence as a boisterous railroad town on the cattle frontier. Parishioners opened a mission near the railroad yards in a rowdy area known as "Skiddy Row." Here, they offered religious services and material assistance to those in need. Early parish registers accordingly note the baptizing of "fallen women" and the Christian burial of those who died by "foul gunplay."
St. Luke's, by the end of the nineteenth century, had become a congregation of one hundred fifty communicants. The parish attracted as members a diverse group of parishioners. They represented the cosmopolitan nature of Denison as a regional transportation and commercial center. Employees of the Railroad Company, teachers, attorneys, physicians, and business people found their way to the parish. In some cases, the great-grandchildren of these early parishioners are present-day communicants at St. Luke's. In 1896, St. Luke's joined with thirteen other parishes in the North Texas area to form the Diocese of Dallas. Delegates from the parish to that convention eagerly joined with their colleagues in electing Alexander Garrett as the first Bishop of Dallas. Bishop Garrett was always held in special regard at St. Luke's. His photograph and a formal portrait of him is proudly displayed in the Chapel. Indeed, Bishop Garrett continued to preach at St. Luke's on his regular Episcopal visits until his death in 1924.
The early decades of this century saw both Denison and St. Luke's stabilize in terms of growth. For the most part, the parish has had from 150 to 200 communicants on its rolls since the era of World War One to the present, aside from a transitory period of expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1920s and 1930s were particularly lean years for Denison as the cattle trade shifted from Texas to Chicago while the entire nation was thereafter gripped by the Great Depression. The discovery of oil and gas in Grayson County, however, did soften some of the serious economic impacts of the depression locally, at least when compared to other areas of the country. The World War Two years brought a return of prosperity to Denison. In 1939, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began construction on Denison Dam, a major floor control project that created Lake Texoma, which exists today as one of the largest recreational lakes in the southwestern United States. Several months after Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps opened Perrin Field as a pilot training center. This base remained operational until the early 1970s and, during the post war years, it functioned as a major Air Force facility.
The ensuring prosperity from these events was reflected at St. Luke's in 1942 with the construction of Frank Hughes Hall and the remodeling of the main church building. Originally, Hughes Hall contained a fellowship hall, kitchen facilities, almost a dozen Sunday school rooms, and an office for the priest. Today, after an extensive modernization and remodeling, it houses the parish offices, a small chapel, and facilities for the Altar Guild, and several classrooms. The postwar World War Two years saw continued growth at St. Luke's. In many ways, the modern history of St. Luke's dates from the respective tenures as Rector of Reverend David A. Jones and his successor, Reverend A. Harrison Lee. Their period as rectors runs from 1952 until 1970. During these years, the number of parishioners reached an all-time high for the parish while the church engaged in a wide variety of activities and ministries. Reverend Lee celebrated the Holy Eucharist during three services each Sunday, held a Morning Prayer service each day of the week, and offered an additional Holy Eucharist each Wednesday afternoon in the chapel at Perrin Air Force Base.
Luke's Parish Day School opened in 1959 during this period of expansion, providing kindergarten through early elementary education for children in Grayson County. Over the years, St. Luke's School has prospered and grown. The school has about 50 students, employs a full-time Headmaster, a full office staff, and teachers offering instruction from pre-kindergarten through pre-k 4. The St. Luke's Day School, although legally owned by the parish, operates as a separate entity, keeping distinct financial accounts. The parish does provide regular in-kind and monetary support for the school. The Vestry makes all significant policy and financial decisions for the school. The majority of the children in attendance do not come from families in the parish. The school is tuition-driven, although some students do attend on scholarship. The National Association of Episcopal Schools accredits it.
The founding of St. Luke's School marked a period of unusual and uncharacteristic prosperity in the history of the parish. This was due the fact that the 1960s witnessed an expansion of Denison's economic base. Perrin Air Force Base functioned at capacity while various industries relocated to the city because of increasingly convenient highway access to Dallas, one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas. Indeed, starting in the 1960s, the entire north Texas region comprehended by the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex enjoyed phenomenal economic and population growth. Denison, although on the northern periphery of development, attracted food processing plants, various light manufacturing operations, and regional health care facilities, all of which became important to the local economy. Many of St. Luke's current parishioners came to the area as part of this economic and demographic growth, some of which has continued to the present day.
Nonetheless, the 1970s and early 1980s became a difficult time for St. Luke's as Denison suffered several devastating economic reversals. Perrin Air Force base closed in 1971, creating a ripple effect that removed several thousand jobs from the local economy. Then, as a drastic decline in domestic oil prices during the early 1980s decimated the entire Texas economy, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company fell on hard times. It eventually merged into the Union Pacific Company, closing its operational headquarters and major yard facilities in Denison. Like other churches in Denison, St. Luke's had parishioners whose employment was directly affected by these closings. As well, the pressures and frustrations surrounding these difficulties were manifested by various controversies in the parish. One rector during the 1970s left the Episcopal Church to become a Roman Catholic while another departed to found a nearby mission station.
In the Mid 1980’s, the Vestry completed an ambitious building program that resulted in the construction of Kohfeldt Hall, a facility that almost doubled the size of the parish physical plant. Kohfeldt Hall contains a choir room, administration offices, a large fellowship hall, and an industrial sized kitchen. This construction project also included the building of a large parking lot and extensive landscaping of the parish grounds. Gregg House, which was at that time home to the Day School, was also refurbished while Hughes Hall underwent a complete remodeling. At this writing, Father Jacob Nichols is the Rector of St. Luke’s Church. St. Luke's just celebrated its 150th Anniversary in 2023, dating from its incorporation by the Church Wardens in 1873.
