Worship on Jekyll began in a tiny chapel
BY FRAN WORRALL
Almost every visitor to Jekyll Island discovers Faith Chapel, the church that served the prominent families of the Jekyll Island Club. But the first church attended by Club members was Union Chapel, a tiny non-denominational house of worship located on the north end of the Club compound. Built in 1898, the modest structure featured board-and-batten siding, a cypress shingle roof, nondescript glass windows, and a bell tower. Rustic pews seated approximately 50 people.
According to Andrea Marroquin, curator of Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum, socialite Charlotte Maurice, wife of Jekyll Island Club founding member Charles Stewart Maurice, spearheaded the effort to bring in various clergymen to preach at Union Chapel on Sundays. “Some were local ministers, others prominent clergy from up north,” she says. Typical services included bible readings, hymns, a sermon, an offering, and, occasionally, communion.
Within six years, an influx of new Club members rendered Union Chapel too small. Faith Chapel was built in 1904, and Union Chapel was moved to an area adjacent to what was called the Quarters, housing built in the 1890s for Jekyll’s Black employees. “Church was an integral part of the community of about 25 families who lived and worked on the island year round,” Marroquin says. Weekly Sunday school classes were typically taught by members of the congregation, while church services, held on Sunday afternoons and evenings, were often conducted by ministers from the mainland. Prayer meetings were held on Tuesday nights.
Although the relocated chapel was intended for use by the Black community, visitors were common. “Club members and the island’s white employees enjoyed listening to the music, and some Club members were known to attend services at both Union Chapel and Faith Chapel,” Marroquin says.
Union Chapel was likely razed in the early 1960s at the same time as the island’s Black employee housing, but recollections of the small chapel that once served the community so well live on in archival images and oral histories.
