Charles Edward McDougall and the Founding of St. Mary's Episcopal Church

by Nathan Woolsey (2003)

As can be best determined from surviving evidence, the congregation of St. Mary's Episcopal Church was first formed in 1867, with its first service held by the Rev. James S. Jarrett of Greenville, Alabama on August 4th of that year. The Rev. Jarrett preached once that day, took ill, and died thirteen days later, a victim of Yellow Fever. From such an inauspicious beginning, St. Mary's has maintained a small, yet important presence in Milton.

In the beginning, physical possessions were few. A listing of St. Mary's property in 1868 comprised: "One reed organ and stool, one communion table and cover cloth, cushions and napkins, one washstand, metal basin and earthen pitcher, six towels, benches, lamps, one bell and frame, and two cane-seated chairs." St. Mary's bell, which was cast by Meneeley's Foundry of West Troy, New York in 1868, during the tenure of the Rev. Charles F.D. Lyne can still be heard today, and is undoubtedly St. Mary's oldest surviving artifact.

For a meeting place, the congregation found a temporary home in Milton's Masonic Lodge, then located at the west end of Pine Street, but these first years were crowded. During the week, the Lodge served as Milton's schoolhouse, ballroom, and public hall, as well as Milton's Jewish Temple. Once a month, a kosher market was conducted on the premises. Somehow St. Mary's got its services in, edgewise. Clearly the Church was in desperate need of its own space.

St. Mary's original congregation was small, yet very influential, with many of Milton's leading merchants, professional men, and those engaged in every aspect of the lumber industry among its members. Many of the early communicants were foreign-born, and many of these: William Johnson, William W. Potter, and John O. Hoodless, had come to west Florida from Canada and Great Britain. In its early years, St. Mary's can almost have said to have been an immigrant church of the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, St. Mary's first decade corresponded with Southern Reconstruction, and the Great Depression of the 1870s, and money was very tight. It was under the leadership of the Rev. H.O. Crane that construction of the current Carpenter-Gothic styled sanctuary was begun.

On February 4, 1875, St. Mary's purchased Lot 7, of Block 23 on the northeast corner of Escambia and Oak Streets for $150. As early as 1860, this parcel had been sold to the Perrenot brothers, who kept a tavern in Milton, but the lot remained vacant then, and through several ownership changes thereafter. Vestry members who took possession of the property in 1875, included Charles McDougall, William W. Potter, John Mints, John Carlovitz, William Morrill, James Edwin Creary, David Ragland, and Henry T. Wright.

Construction of the church more than likely proceeded at a fairly rapid rate, yet the greater dilemma of securing leaded window glass strained finances to the utmost. One account that has come down, states that the Ladies Aid Society temporarily solved the problem by tacking up muslin yardage over the empty windows to keep errant birds and wasps from disrupting services. Supposedly, the congregation met for "three years, winter and summer" in the unglazed St. Mary's. Finally in 1878, the glass came in, and two of these original windows can still be seen today in the Sacristy. The Bohemian glass altar window of Mary, on the north wall, is today a priceless treasure, yet a century ago, it was purchased in part, through money raised from a minstrel show, put on by the Sunday School in a nearby barn. The window cost $600, twice the annual yearly income for a working man in Santa Rosa County in 1880. Today, it is irreplaceable.

Likewise, the elaborate interior millwork of the church was supposedly executed by a shipwright named Zelius. It is unclear if he provided funds, or oversaw the work himself. This was most likely the prominent nineteenth-century Pensacola ship chandler, Alexander Zelius. However, the work was most certainly carried out by the Bagdad Sash Factory Company, which was widely known for its production of elaborate interior trim.

Several individuals from the Bagdad mills were members of St. Mary's early congregation. Most of the work on St. Mary's church appears to have been completed by 1878, while memorial gifts furnished items as needed. On April 20, 1890, the Rt. Rev. Edwin Gardner Weed, III Bishop of Florida, officially consecrated St. Mary's under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Florida, indicating that all debts from construction had been paid in full. Most unfortunately, St. Mary's building plans, along with any documents relating to the church's construction have long since disappeared.

Today, we can only guess at how much it cost to build and furnish such a church, in a small Florida mill town of the 1870's. Much was donated, but St. Mary's was a high-style Victorian edifice all the same, utilizing the finest pine and cypress grades then obtainable. Not much was spared in its execution. Ultimately, a sum of about $3500 was most likely expended on its construction, windows, pews, and decoration--the price of a sawmill. Certainly, only Milton's brick courthouse cost more.

Charles Edward McDougall

Charles Edward McDougall was born July 4, 1830 in Athens, Pennsylvania, the only son of William and Isabelle Louisa Melcher McDougall of Gorham, and Brunswick, Maine, respectively. In 1834, William McDougall, a physician moved his family south to Wetumpka, Alabama in search of a warmer climate for his "chronic lung disease," presumably tuberculosis. The family also spent four years in Charleston, South Carolina before returning permanently to Wetumpka in 1846.

Information on Charles E. McDougall's early education is scant, but he received a B.A. from Bowdoin College of Brunswick, Maine at age seventeen in 1847, and a M.A. from Bowdoin in 1850. By May of that year, Charles had returned to Wetumpka where he began his own study of medicine in the offices of Doctors T.W. and E. Mason of the town. Charles continued his medical education at Penn College in Philadelphia and received his medical degree at age twenty-three in 1853. Thereafter, Charles returned to Alabama where he began his medical practice in Montgomery.

In 1854, Charles married Sarah Elizabeth Thompson of Wetumpka, and a daughter, Fannie McDougall, followed a year later in 1855. In 1857, the McDougalls moved to Milton, where the eldest son, William E. McDougall was born later that year. The 1850's were boom years for the timber industry in western Florida, and Charles was undoubtedly drawn to Milton by the report of prospects, from an old friend from Wetumpka, lawyer George Gray McWhorter, who had become one of Milton's most prominent citizens.

Nevertheless, by 1859, the McDougalls had returned to Alabama, where Charles began a practice at the village of Brooklyn in Conecuh County, where four-year-old Fannie died. In February 1860, a second daughter, Ethel was born to the couple there, as well as a second son, Charles C. McDougall in January 1862. By the time, the Civil War had closed in on the McDougalls, but Charles, as a physician, was granted a deferment from military service by the Confederate Army in December 1862. By March 1863, the family was living at Sparta, Alabama, where Charles received a second deferment, which was followed by yet a third, in August 1864. Remarkably, Charles E. McDougall appears to have come through the war having seen no military or medical service. There may yet be records that prove otherwise.

Following the war, the McDougalls returned to Milton, where in March 1866, their fourth daughter, Sarah was born. A third daughter, Mabel, had been born in Sparta in 1864.

On June 3, 1872, Charles and Sarah McDougall purchased Lot 1 of Block 30, on the southeast corner of Milton's Escambia and Oak Streets for $1355. This sum is indicative that the present "McDougall/St. Mary's Rectory" was already in existence at that date, and that it was a fine structure. The original core of the house clearly comprised of four rooms on a crosshall, with an interior staircase that rose to two bedrooms on a loft hall, above. In 1872, the kitchen would have been separate from the main house. Charles McDougall also added his surgery to the plan, which is today utilized as the rectory's library. A pair of exterior double doors admitted patients on the east side of the dwelling. Construction of a sanctuary of St. Mary's congregation would commence directly across Oak Street from the McDougall's front door in 1875.

Charles E. McDougall was a lifelong Episcopalian, and Christian service marked his spiritual life, as medicine formed his occupation. Accordingly, Charles E. McDougall was ordained Deacon, April 13, 1876 in the unfinished St. Mary's by the Rt. Rev. John Freeman Young, and by call of the vestry immediately became minister in charge. On May 7, 1887, McDougall was raised to the priesthood by the Rt. Rev. Edwin G. Weed, and became Rector of St. Mary's Parish. However, the reverend doctor had some good-natured competition.

For reasons not entirely clear, Milton's Baptist congregation built their own church, also in Block 23, about 1885. This sanctuary faced Santa Rosa Street, perpendicular to where St. Mary's parish hall is situated today. The rear wall of this church, which contained an elaborate bay and baptismal tank, fell within twenty feet of St. Mary's windows. In the days before air conditioning--and electricity--these were opened outward in the summertime, on pivots, allowing the two congregations to share in each other's hymns and sermons. Milton's First Baptist Church moved away to their present site in 1912.

Through 1900, McDougall family life continued to be centered on their Oak Street home. Son, Charles C. McDougall operated a jewelry store in Milton. Son, William E. McDougall owned and edited the Milton Clarion newspaper, as well as ran the family's "Palace Drug Store" on Willing Street until his untimely death in 1891. Thereafter, daughter, Mabel McDougall operated the drugstore, until well into the twentieth century. Daughter, Ethel McDougall married Santa Rosa County Clerk, Lewis P. Golson in 1889, and built the Golson House across Oak Street from the Rectory, on the northwest corner of Escambia and Oak Streets in 1893, where it still stands today.

Charles E. McDougall died on May 25th, 1916, three months after his wife, Sarah, having given Milton more than fifty years as a physician, and forty years as the Episcopal rector. Daughter, Mabel lived on in the family home until her death in 1951. In her will, she left the Oak Street house to St. Mary's Episcopal Church, to be used as its rectory. It has been used as a rectory, and church office since. Several large pieces of McDougall family furniture are still to be found in the house, along with portraits of Charles, Sarah, and their daughter Mabel in the downstairs hallway.

St. Mary's Church remains today, virtually unchanged. The church that Mabel McDougall knew as a young woman in the 1880's and as an old woman in the 1940's is the church that we see today. The coal-fired "Heatrola" that was stoked every winter Sunday, by the twelve-year-old Bogan Hoodless (survived today at St. Mary's by his daughter, Beverly St. John) is long gone, and the lamps have been converted from kerosene to electricity, but St. Mary's remains--suspended in time--a place of reflection and worship in a very changed world.

To read more about the history of St. Mary's and Santa Rosa County, visit the Friends of Pace Library website.