Wilson Advance, 6 December 1888.

“On April 23, 1888, the minister at St. Luke’s in Tarboro formally took over the work at Grace Mission as a part-time missionary to Wilson. John William Perry was a graduate of St. Augustine’s and had been consecrated a priest by Bishop Lyman on April 7, 1887. He had been doing ‘most valuable work’ as rector at St. Luke’s since 1881. According to his own account, ‘when I took charge of this work [at Wilson] I found a few communicants and no Sunday School in operation and no particular place to worship in. When we could not rent a place to hold the services in, a room was used of a private family.

“Reverend Perry soon started a fund-raising campaign. Partly as a result, by October 1887, the diocese — with St. Timothy’s [a white congregation] ‘giving the greater portion of the purchase price’ — had obtained possession of a lot on the corner north of Lodge Street running 65 feet and running south on the west side of South Street for 153 feet ‘for the Colored Congregation … to build thereon an Episcopal Church for their use and benefit.'”

— Patrick M. Valentine, The Episcopalians of Wilson County: A History of St. Timothy’s and St. Mark’s Churches in Wilson, North Carolina 1856-1995 (1996).

Location of the new church building, as shown in the 1893 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, N.C.