St. Luke's Episcopal Church (1886)
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The history of St. Luke's began on the night of November 29, 1841 when a group of thirteen citizens of Lincolnton gathered in the Pleasant Retreat Academy and formed a congregation to be known as St. Luke's Church. The deed to the land was transferred on March 2, 1842 from Col. John Hoke to the trustees of St. Luke's Church. On March 9, the cornerstone of the first church was laid. The church was consecrated on July 29, 1843 by the Right Reverend Levi Silliman Ives, the second Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina. St. Luke's was admitted into the diocese at the convention of 1843 and subsequently became a part of the Diocese of Western North Carolina in 1922.
St. Luke's Churchyard -- The historic churchyard of St. Luke's came into use with the building of the church in 1842. The earliest group of gravestones date from the 1850's to the 1870's. There are two adjoining cast iron fences which date from the late 1860's and enclose the graves of Major General Stephen Dodson Ramseur (1837-1864) and William (d. 1863) and Edward (d. 1864) Phifer, all of whom died in the Civil War. Ramseur, the youngest Major General in the Confederate Army was mortally wounded and died at the age of 27 after the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia.
Several rows to the east of the Ramseur fence is the monument of William Alexander Hoke (1851-1925), who was elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1904 as an associate justice and served as chief justice of North Carolina until 1925. In a corner of the churchyard is a tombstone in the form of a six legged table that marks the remains of Lorenzo Ferrer (1780-1875), a native of Lyons, France. The most important signed monument was created by the well-known marble yard of J. Baird, Philadelphia. It is the monument of Caroline Rebecca Guion who died in childbirth in 1854
View: St. Luke's Episcopal Church
