We are called Christians. Let us be worthy.

Where we have fallen short, let us make a greater effort; where we have done good work, let us make it even better; where new work presents itself let us widen our field of service. In the coming year it is particularly important that every parish church and especially the Auxiliary women should be prepared to welcome all those returning from war service and to assist them in re-establishing themselves in their homes, their church and in the community. World Fellowship in Christ will exist when the true meaning of Christian Social Relations is demonstrated in our individual lives in our daily living. We are called Christians. Let us be worthy.

(Source: Noel Hart (Mrs. V. K.), Christian Social Relations Chairman, 1945 Woman’s Auxiliary Annual Report, 52)

The world is a different place from what we'd like for it to be

While many of you have long ago identified your ministry, there may be some of you here today who feel you are not fully using your talents or perhaps there’s someone at home who needs your encouragement. I challenge you to listen, and to dream, to make new plans and open new doors. The world is a different place from what we’d like for it to be.  Our noisy, chaotic and polluted culture bombards us daily. There are wounded and pained people who need healing.  There are abused, homeless, unemployed, hungry, illiterate, depressed and victims of racism and sexism out there; and more and more it appears they may not be “out there” but they may indeed be sitting beside you – those who need your help, or your ear or your ministering.  There are daily opportunities and daily choices to hear – really hear, - these cries, and to act.

(Source: June Gregson Gregory (Mrs. John T.), President’s Address to 1987 ECW Annual Meeting)

some definite plan for reaching the young people of this Diocese with the challenge of missionary service

The need, still, is for more “laborers in the harvest.” Mrs. William Gordon has written the following challenge to us and has given me permission to quote from her letter: “If the Auxiliary had been able to have the Annual Meeting, I should have offered through your Department, a resolution asking the Auxiliary to make some definite plan for reaching the young people of this Diocese with the challenge of missionary service. In past years, we have had a noble list of missionaries; today we have one priest and two wives active, beyond the limits of the United States. I pay tribute to the splendid work being done by the six women in the domestic field, and I should like to tell you of the expressions of appreciation of the work Inez Middleton is doing among the Negroes in Arkansas, that I heard when I traveled in that diocese last fall. I am not unmindful of the conditions in many of the “foreign” fields, but I am also mindful of the unparalleled opportunities which may be ours a few years hence. So, it seems to me that now, we should be emphasizing in the Church Schools, in all our Youth work, at the Summer Camps and Conferences, the need of the healing gospel of Jesus Christ. Not only efforts for humanitarian betterment, but the Kingship of our Lord Himself.

(Source: Helen W. Brown (Mrs. Craighill), Missionary Correspondent’s Report, 1945 Woman’s Auxiliary Annual Report, 55)

An ECW "Special": Our Church is the first and only Church to provide such an opportunity for training

The Bishop Tuttle School for young women who are preparing to enter fields of Social Service or Religious Education has been maintained for a number of years as a special project of the National Women’s Auxiliary. Our Church is the first and only Church to provide such an opportunity for training so that this school is widely recognized as being a distinctive contribution of our Episcopal Church to the needs and development of the Negro people. Thus far however its merits have been recognized and its graduates used more largely outside of our Church than within it. There is still work to be done in securing suitable candidates from our Negro parishes and in providing them opportunities for service within the Church.

(Source: The Rev. Edgar H. Goold, President’s Report to the St. Augustine’s College Board of Trustees, St. Augustine’s Record, May/June 1934)

the proposition that women be eligible to vote in parish meetings

An interesting feature of the day was the action taken on the resolution made through a member of the Auxiliary, by a member of the Convention. Voting against the resolution, “That we, the members of the Woman’s Auxiliary present at this annual meeting do approve of the proposition that women be eligible to vote in parish meetings,” were twenty-five branches; in favor, four branches; and divided, one branch.

(Source: Meeting Minutes of May 13, 1913, 1913 Woman’s Auxiliary Annual Report, 11)

The women in these counties have graduated in highest schools of culinary art

August is the month for picnics and Home Comings in this section of the country, and our congregation Good Shepherd, Cooleemee has participated in several of them… . August in Davie and Rowan impresses one that life is just one picnic after another.  And the cookery is excellent.  The fame of these tables has gone out far and wide.  The women in these counties have graduated in highest schools of culinary art, and the amount of provision at these picnics attests to the fact that the men are good providers.  Prosperity, generous hospitality, fine citizenship, characterize this section of country. 

(Source: The Carolina Churchman, October 1928, 7)

a woman of many Christian attributes, also a woman of many sorrows and acquainted with grief

Our Parish had the misfortune to lose, on September 29th, 1877, one of its best members and ablest workers, Mrs. Laura Ingraham James, mother of our faithful communicant, George James. Mrs. James was a woman of many Christian attributes, also a woman of many sorrows and acquainted with grief, losing three children, who are buried beside her in our cemetery, and afterwards losing her own life from diphtheria, contracted in an effort to care for some motherless children in our community who were desperately ill with this fearful disease, which medical science had not learned to combat in those days.

(Source: Mrs. John D. Leak, “History of the Parish of Calvary Church,” Centennial Service Booklet, 1920, Calvary Church, Wadesboro, 13, Parish Files, Diocesan Archives)

a special feature will probably be a chapel constructed by the ladies

Charlotte’s new hospital set-up with a large Memorial Hospital combining the old St. Peter’s will at the same time perpetuate the name by means of a section in the new structure to be known as “St. Peter’s Wing,” the Rev. John L. Jackson declared to Executive Council meeting in Raleigh on September 20. His remarks were part of his report as chairman of the Christian Social Service Department. “Memorials will be preserved in this new wing, and also a special feature will probably be a chapel constructed by the ladies of the Church Service League of St. Peter’s Church, Charlotte.”

(Source: “St. Peter’s Hospital Status Explained to Executive Council,” The North Carolina Churchman, October 1, 1938, pp. 1-2)

She had an obsession for helping others

Aunt Nannie was superintendent, business manager, secretary, and treasurer of the school for 37 years, and the person with whom all business concerning the school was transacted. She did all the employing of school personnel; she was chief disciplinarian; and it was she who made the school the success it was. As one of her pupils says, “Education was almost her God, and she had an obsession for helping others.”

(Source: This excerpt was drawn from a profile of Mary Anna Davis Geffroy for “By Word & Example: Women Who Graced the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, 1817-2017.”