Our Story

Before there was a building, there were a few Episcopalians in Montevallo who gathered to pray in the Masonic Hall. In 1860, under the Rev. James F. Smith, they organized as a parish and raised a small English-style church on Valley Street. The town was young. The congregation was smaller still.

In 1873 a tornado tore that first church to the ground. Only three Episcopalian families remained in Montevallo, and still they built again, a Gothic-style church to stand where the first had stood.

For decades St. Andrew’s was small and tenacious. In 1920 it became an organized mission, served by clergy who rode the train in from Calera and Montgomery to lead worship for a handful of communicants. By the early 1920s a parish of seventeen souls, five of them children, kept the lamps lit.

Then, in April 1939, a storm destroyed the church a second time. Bishop Charles C. J. Carpenter walked the wreckage and described it in words our parishioners still repeat.

It looks as if a giant had picked it up, crushed it, thrown it to the ground, and then ground it under his heel. A complete loss.

The congregation was undeterred. They gathered in a concert hall at the college and began again, while the Rev. Charles H. Douglass rebuilt the parish records lost in the storm by writing to churches across the country.

Through the 1940s and into the 1950s they raised the money dollar by dollar, with help from the diocese and the Woman’s Auxiliary, until a neo-Gothic brick church rose on the same corner, the third building on the same ground. In 1958 a hand-built Dutch organ arrived by ship at the port of Mobile and was carried inland. The young musician who played its first concert went on to the Smithsonian, and one of the performers that day, Polly Holliday, became a celebrated actress.

St. Andrew’s has often been a place of doors opened wider. In 1969, only weeks after the diocese first allowed it, the parish elected Vivian Irene Roe to its vestry, by all available records the first woman elected to a vestry in the Diocese of Alabama. In 1971, after 111 years, the parish welcomed its first full-time resident vicar.

The years since have brought a larger parish hall, Canterbury House for University of Montevallo students, a 150th anniversary celebrated in 2010 with the bishop, and a long line of faithful clergy. Today the Rev. Quincy Hall serves the parish, and the work goes on: the same table, the same welcome, the same stubborn hope.

Twice this church has been leveled, and twice it has risen on the same ground. That is not, to us, an accident of history. It is the gospel we live by, that the God who raised Jesus is mending everything that storm and time have broken, and that nothing surrendered to him is ever finally lost.

The story, year by year

1. 1860
   Organized under the Rev. James F. Smith. A small English-style church is built on Valley Street.
2. 1873
   A tornado destroys the first church. A Gothic-style replacement is built, though only three Episcopalian families remain in town.
3. 1920
   St. Andrew's becomes an organized mission, with clergy traveling in by train by way of Calera.
4. 1922
   Seventeen communicants live in Montevallo, including five children.
5. 1939
   An April storm destroys the second church. The congregation gathers in Calkins Hall at Alabama College.
6. 1940s
   The Rev. Charles H. Douglass rebuilds the parish records lost in the storm.
7. 1950s
   A neo-Gothic brick church is completed and consecrated by Bishop Carpenter, the third building on the same ground.
8. 1958
   A Flentrop pipe organ arrives from the Netherlands by ship. Its inaugural concert features future actress Polly Holliday.
9. 1969
   Vivian Irene Roe is elected to the vestry, the first woman elected to a vestry in the Diocese of Alabama.
10. 1971
    The Rev. Jack Keith Bush arrives as the parish's first full-time resident vicar, 111 years after its founding.
11. 1973
    St. Andrew's becomes the diocese's second parish to keep perpetual reservation of the Sacrament.
12. 1975
    Redesignated from organized mission to supported parish, with a rector and vestry.
13. 2007
    A 3,000 square foot addition adds a larger parish hall, kitchen, nursery, classrooms, and offices.
14. 2010
    Canterbury House is completed, and the parish celebrates its 150th anniversary with Bishop Henry N. Parsley, Jr.
15. 2024
    The Rev. Rebecca DeBow begins serving as priest-in-charge.
16. 2026
    The Rev. Quincy Hall begins service, with ordination to the priesthood in April.