One Sunday night at the end of April, 1900, a small group of peopole gathered in the little stone building of the Kenilworth Union church. They had been called together by the Rev. Dr. Moore, rector of Christ Church, Winnetka, who had been holding services in various homes, for the purpose of organizing a parish of the Episcopal church in Kenilworth.
A parish was thus formed, with the Rev. Mr. Moore a devout, Godly, scholarsly man, as priest, and the congregation consisting of Mrs. Charles Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Alpheus S. Badger, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Lloyd, Mrs. Charles Sturges, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Taylor Jr. and Mr. and Mrs. William F. Wood. Thereafter services were held every Sunday evening during 1900 and 1901. The Rv. Mr. Moore walked from and to Winnetka to hold the services, asking no compensation.
In 1903 the congregation, still growing, called the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson Jewett Jr. as rector. About this time the Union church decided to try again and the building was no longer available for Episcopal services, so the congregation decided to build at once a church for themselves.
Growth and expansion have continued under the present rector. Numbering 49 communicants and 65 members in 1922, the parish now numbers over 400 confirmed people and 800 baptized members. A stone memorial recory was built and connected to the church with a stone cloister in 1925. In the same year a national shrine was created by the removal of the body of Eugene Field, the children's poet, from Graceland cemetery, Chicago, to the cloister close located between church and rectory. The rector's garden, constructed by the rector himself as a hobby, contains a relief map of the Holy land depticting the country as it was in Christ's time. In this garden are many historical relics which have been donated by visitors to the garden, some 3,000 to 4,000 people from every state in the Union making pilgrimages to the tomb and garden each year.
