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In 1868, several families in the New Lenox area met in the Methodist Meeting house until they could build their own church home.
The next year, a lot south of Hickory Creek was purchased for $45. Someone obtained a book of plans by Richard Upjohn and our Prairie Gothic Church was modeled after Christ Church, West Davenport, Iowa, and to this day, remains, one of very few examples of Prairie Gothic Church architecture.
Services were held in the church long before it was completed. Windows were boarded, benches were rough, a box covered with a red cloth served as the altar, and with this roofless building benches often had to be shoveled free of snow before services began.
In 1879, Bishop McClaren consecrated Grace Church. Since then additions included the bell tower in 1902, undercroft dug out by hand and bucket in 1948, and in 1978 the Parish Hall was dedicated.
The "little white church with red doors" has been a part of New Lenox for over 125 years. What Nellie Gougar (whose family members continue to attend Grace) wrote for our 50th Anniversary in 1919 still holds true:
We have yet among us good and faithful workers, but our work is not the work and responsibility of those who started and brought it so nearly to completion before giving the work into other hands. So it will be with us, and we sometimes wonder what the next generation in Grace Church will inherit as the result of this generation's work. We hope that any good work we may have tried to do will be so left that it will not be wholly lost.
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