|
History of
the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs
As a tourist attraction,
Tarpon Springs, the northernmost city in Pinellas County, is
widely known for its sponge industry and its unrivaled location
around and among beautiful bayous leading to the Anclote River
and the Gulf of Mexico. For many, it is a first visit, and
seeing the sponge docks and boats and other colorful waterfront
developments quite naturally arouses interest in knowing more
about how all this got its start.
Tarpon Springs can rightfully
claim an unusually interesting, romantic history. The area
around the Anclote River, an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico, was
once occupied and then abandoned by the Timucuan Indians and the
Seminoles. It was wild and uninhabited when the first white
family came to settle in 1876. As late as 1880, only a few
families had cleared land for homesteads in the area.
In 1885 fourteen
Universalists gathered in a hall over a store to form a
congregation with the Rev. Henry deLafayette Webster as its
first minister. By the next year a small wooden church was built
on land donated by Anson P. K. Safford, a local land developer,
former Governor of Arizona, and a Universalist. Thus the first
church in Tarpon Springs was erected two years before the city
was incorporated and before the Orange Belt Railways came
through the town. Other denominations being organized had use of
the building until they could have their own.
The year after this first
building was destroyed by fire in 1908, the present structure
was erected at the corner of Grand Boulevard and Read Street.
Several additions have been made since. The congregation has at
various times been named Church of the Good Shepherd, First
Universalist Church, and Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs.
Its present name, Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon
Springs, was adopted in 1992.
Both Webster and Safford had
many northern friends who were among those being attracted as
winter visitors to Tarpon Springs after the railroad was built
and the town was being developed as a resort. One winter visitor
was George Inness, Sr., the famous 19th century
landscape artist, who painted some of his well-known works here.
Later his son, George Inness, Jr., a member of the church,
painted three beautiful landscape panels for the sanctuary to
replace windows blown out by a hurricane in 1918. The church is
now home to ten large Inness paintings that adorn the walls,
making a notable contribution to the beauty of the interior and
to the cultural life of the community.
The Unitarian Universalist
Church of Tarpon Springs is one of some eleven hundred societies
that are members of the Unitarian Universalist Association of
North America.
Services are held in the
sanctuary of the Church at 10:30 a.m. on Sundays, October first
to the end of May. Members of the congregation discuss all
sermons in open forum after the service. Lay members of the
congregation give presentations each Sunday in June and
September.
For
those who may not know how this denomination differs from the
traditional orthodox Christian denominations, it may be said
that in the Unitarian Universalist denomination there are no
fixed creeds or dogmas, but, rather, there is encouragement of
independent thinking and free inquiry in the search for a
meaningful religion related to everyday living. |
