New Book Release: St. Mark's Church in Ortega

St. Mark's Church in Ortega: The First One Hundred Years 1922-2022

For the last century, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has served Jacksonville’s Ortega neighborhood and its generations of members. While the spiritual roots of the church go back to the nineteenth century, it wasn’t until November 1919, when a lanky, young clergyman pedaled his bicycle across the St. John’s River to embrace a new assignment. Douglas Bagwell Leatherbury climbed the steps of a small wooden building known in the neighborhood as “The Little Brown Church.” This is the story of those 100 years. It’s the story of how St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has evolved and how it has grown into a multi-generational neighborhood church on an expansive and gorgeous campus. It’s also the story of St. Mark’s embracing change and preparing to embrace the next century.

This book offers something for everyone. Perhaps, it’s simply browsing all seventy-two carefully curated pages to enjoy and explore archival memoirs and historical snapshots. Everyone will marvel at stunning, artistic images vividly captured in St. Mark’s extraordinary stained-glass murals, and others may fully immerse themselves in a century old historical journey.