St. Paul's Episcopal Church: The Pro-Cathedral Years

Organized 20 April 1837; first church consecrated 31 December 1843; present church opened Easter 1907; pro-cathedral of the Diocese of Northern Indiana, 1925-1950; 616 E. Second Street

The founding: St. Paul's was organized on 20 April 1837 by the Rev. Charles B. Stout — who had come from Edwardsburg, Michigan — and the Rev. Henry F. M. Whitesides, as the diocesan archives spell the second founder's name; the parish's own published history spells it Whitehead, and both spellings stand as the two records give them. Thirteen people made the first congregation, meeting in a schoolhouse at the village's edge. St. Paul's is the oldest formally organized parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana. Its first church, on the hill on the west side of North Spring Street, was consecrated on 31 December 1843 and held Mishawaka's first belfry bell, cast in 1836.

Decline and revival: The parish nearly died in the 1870s, and was revived under the Rev. Augustine Prentiss from March 1883 — Bishop Knickerbacker confirmed sixteen adults that July. In 1906-07 the hill church was sold for the gravel beneath it, one of the record's strangest church endings, and the parish built at 616 East Second Street on the foundation of an old ice house, opening the new church at Easter 1907; the timeline's further row dates the new church's building to 1908, and the opening stands here at Easter 1907 with the building course running 1906-08. The rector who chose the move, John Addams Linn — a nephew of Jane Addams — left before its completion and was killed in France in the First World War as a chaplain; a plaque in the church remembers him. Lewis C. Rogers then held the rectorship for twenty-five years, 1908 to 1933.

The pro-cathedral: In 1925 Bishop Campbell Gray named St. Paul's his pro-cathedral — the acting cathedral of the young Diocese of Northern Indiana. Ralph Adams Cram, the era's great Gothic Revival architect, drew a cathedral for the parish at Cedar Street and Lincoln Way; the Depression and the Second World War killed the plan unbuilt. Bishop Reginald Mallett removed the pro-cathedral title in 1950 and took the diocesan seat to South Bend, where he was enthroned at St. James Cathedral in 1957; the parish history's own first telling says the honor held "until 1951," and the removal stands here at 1950, the honor often reckoned into 1951. Wilbur B. Dexter's rectorship began in 1952. In 2008 the parish called the Rev. Susan Bunton Haynes from St. James Cathedral, South Bend — afterward elected Bishop of Southern Virginia in 2019. St. Paul's stands active at 616 East Lincolnway, Sunday worship at 8 and 10 a.m., its rector the Rev. Nathaniel Adishian in the diocese's October 2026 parish postings.

Sources:

1. St. Paul's parish published history (stpaulsmishawaka.org) — founding, revival, Linn, the pro-cathedral and its two tellings of the end date.
2. Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana archives and parish postings, October 2026 (the Whitesides spelling; the present rectorship).
3. Ed Chamberlin, Mishawaka church-history timeline, South Bend Area Genealogical Society, 2016 (the 1836 bell; Easter 1907).