| The congregation of St. Peter's Episcopal Church organized in 1851 and had by 1860 completed the present church structure, which follows the designs of 19th-century American architect Richard Upjohn. The tower was added in 1893. Of great importance as the oldest religious structure in Oxford and a once-designated "Cathedral Church" of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, St. Peter's history is also enhanced by a number of prominent men who have served or worshiped here. The first senior warden of the church was John Millington, an important English and American scientis; the first full-time rector was Frederick Barnard, Chancellor of the University of Mississippi and later president of Columbia University. Jacob Thompson, a United States Congressman from Mississippi, was a vestryman of St. peter's. Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner was a communicant of the church. The building was individually listed on the National Register on 24 July 1975, and was later listed as element #47 in the Oxford Courthouse Square Historic District, which was placed on the National Register on 2 April 1980. It is included in the "Inventory of the Church Archives of Mississippi – Protestant Episcopal Church – Diocese of Mississippi" (1940) (#38, pp.73-74), "Historic Architecture in Mississippi" (1973) (p.150), "Old Homes of Mississippi, Volume II: Columbus and the North" (1977) (pp. 117-118), "Faulkners, Fortunes, and Flames" (1984) (p.107), "Historic Churches of Mississippi" (2007) (pp. 120-121), and "Buildings of Mississippi" (2020) (p.153, NC22). [HABS: MS-250 (1975)] |