In the years preceding the Civil War, the Diocese of Virginia agonized over its small number of Black communicants as compared to the Baptist and Methodist Churches. The Diocese’s Committee on the Religious Instruction of the Colored Population described the problem in a report presented to the 1860 diocesan convention. The committee found that on the massive plantations of South Carolina and Georgia enslaved people worshiped in a way chosen by their enslavers. In Virginia, where the plantation system was less prominent, enslaved people worshiped as they chose. With its segregation of Black communicants within white parishes, The Episcopal Church had little to offer them. The committee recommended establishing independent Black congregations.

Following the Civil War, formerly enslaved adults sought education for themselves and their children in great numbers, seeing it as a path to economic improvement, self-determination, and political participation. White secular and religious leaders set out to meet that demand, establishing schools for Black students of all ages throughout the South. Several such schools were founded in Petersburg, Virginia. Three of these schools were run by the local Episcopal Churches: Grace Church, under Rev. Churchill J. Gibson, established a Sunday School for Black students in October 1865. A parochial school followed in January 1866. St. Paul’s Church, under Confederate veteran Major Giles B. Cooke, established a second Sunday School. By 1869, these schools were affiliated with each other under the banner of the Church Lay Association of Petersburg.

At the same time, the Freedman’s Aid Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church dispatched a teacher, Miss Amanda Aiken, to Petersburg to establish her own school for Black students.  In March 1866, she rented “a large room, already warmed,” gathered together some books and lamps, and opened a school with fifty-four scholars on the first night, although over a hundred sought her out. Within two months, she had an assistant, Mrs. Caroline Bragg, to help with the youngest learners.

Demand for education swiftly outpaced the available space. To accommodate her growing school, numbering over three hundred students, Miss Aiken relocated to Stringfellow Chapel. The title of the chapel was held by the Freedmen’s Bureau, which granted the use of it to the Freedman’s Aid Commission for a four-year period. Despite the structure’s simplicity, the community sought to build not just a school, but a church. They were especially keen to prepare it for a visit by Bishop Whittle.

Unfortunately, on the night of April 9, 1867, a month before Whittle’s visit, the building burned. The congregation saved only the books and benches. Although no one was brought to justice, it was thought at the time to be arson, “the work of some evilly disposed person of the dominant race, pained with the avidity with which the Negroes responded to the educational call.”

Disappointed but undaunted, the community raised $5,214 for a new building, of which an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Major Stone, contributed half.  A year later, on May 18, 1868, the new church was consecrated by Bishop Whittle.  Black communicants of Grace Church and St. Paul’s Church had built a church home of their own.  In the 1869 parochial reports, Grace Church wrote that all of its Black parishioners had left for St. Stephen’s.  St. Paul’s Church noted no Black parishioners in its report.  On May 7, 1869, Bishop Johns ordained Joseph Atwell a priest at the altar of St. Stephen’s Church.  Rev. Atwell became its first Rector.