north of Jefferson Park. The parsonage adjoining the church on the west was built in 1876 at a cost of $600 when the Reverend C. W. Davis was pastor. Reverend D. J. Klopp was pastor in 1901 when it was extensively remodeled.
The present Emanuel Evangelical United Brethern church was built of brick on the same site in 1927 during the pastorate of Reverend S. C. Boswell. The Fitchen Company of Washburn were the contractors and the building committee included the pastor, John G. Crusius, Charles McCauley, J. W. Pfleeger, George Cable, Cecil D. Tarman and Miss Anna Turner. The building seats 250 persons and cost $17,200. It was dedicated by Bishop M. T. Maze on January 15, 1928. Jacob F. Crusius recently donated an electric organ to the church.
Reverend Harvey D. Gabel has been pastor since 1949, and he also was pastor here from 1924 to 1927. The congregation completely redecorated the sanctuary in 1953.
THE ST. ANDREW'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH had a congregation in El Paso long before their church was built. Sometime in 1860 the Reverend Samuel Chase, D. D., an Episcopal clergyman, stopped in El Paso between trains, and during his brief visit baptized a baby of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Hazlett who lived in or near the old depot. One source says this occurred in 1856, and this may be correct, since the William Ostler diary states that Ben Hazlett ran El Paso's first restaurant in 1855, which would make him El Paso's first resident. A child of William M. Jenkins was baptized in the Episcopal faith in August, 1861, and in July, 1865 the Reverend Chamberlayn held Episcopal services in the Presbyterian church building as he was returning from Civil War service.
The Reverend William Steele conducted services here from 1867 to 1869 on a more or less regular schedule, and for the next five years Episcopal clergymen from Bloomington and other places held occasional services, using the McKinley school or the Christian church building. The Reverend Steele returned in 1884 and rooms over the Thomas Doyle store were rented for church services held every two weeks during most of the period.
In December, 1895, the congregation purchased a lot of L. S. Calkins at the southwest corner of First and Cherry as a site for their new church building. Of frame construction, it cost $3,000 and was dedicated October 29, 1896 by the Right Reverend W. E. McLaren, Bishop of the Chicago Diocese. All services were held in the new building thereafter, including the Sunday School, organized in 1873 by Mrs. John Hoagland, perhaps the most active department of the church.
Over the years the membership diminished in numbers and services were not regularly held. In 1947 members of the St. Mathews Episcopal Church of Bloomington, under the leadership of E. V. Gunn, who attended St. Andrew's Sunday School as a boy, began a program of repair and redecoration.
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