In colonial days, Saint James received financial help from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Our last colonial rector, the Rev. Thomas Barton, ministered to those on the frontier, and started our long tradition of exceptional music with the installation of our first organ. Great music has remained central to the worship and lives of the members of Saint James.

During the American Revolution, the church was closed because the Reverend Barton was a royalist. The congregation, however, contained patriots and community leaders. Parishioner George Ross signed the Declaration of Independence. General Edward Hand served in the Continental Army. Edward Shippen, a founder of Princeton University, was the grandfather of Peggy Shippen, the wife of Benedict Arnold. In 1832, parishioner Amos Ellmaker was a candidate for Vice-President of the United States.

Over the years, many members have contributed to improving education in Lancaster. The Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg helped establish free public schools in the city. Thomas Burrowes used his influence to encourage the same for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. First Lady Harriet Lane Johnston (niece of and hostess for President James Buchanan) worshiped at Saint James. She was an early supporter of the National Cathedral and instrumental in founding its Saint Alban's School for Boys.

The parish has built a tradition of reaching out to its members, to the broader community and beyond. Since 1985, Saint James has offered the daily ministry of the Anchorage breakfast program, which serves 30,000 meals a year to some of Lancaster's most vulnerable citizens. Clergy and lay people minister to a growing number of seniors in their homes, and tutor students at a downtown elementary school. Saint James has also sent mission groups of teenagers and adults to the Gulf Coast over the past three years, to assist in recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

The clergy of Saint James have played important roles in the community and in the greater Episcopal Church. Six former rectors and two members of the parish have been elected bishops. Bishop Charles Ingles, an ordinand from the parish, became the first bishop in the British Empire in 1787. The Reverend Elizabeth W. Myers, assistant minister, was the first woman ordained a priest in this diocese. The Right Reverend Nathan D. Baxter, who served as Rector, is the current Bishop of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania.

For more than 265 years, thousands of visitors have found solace within these walls. To those who worship here, and who reach out on behalf of Saint James, it is a place to rejoice in God's love and faithfulness. And for all those who enter this place, for spiritual and physical nourishment, may Saint James truly open doors to God's love in their lives.

by Leo Shelly, Church Historian