Christ Episcopal Church
Covington, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana
Marker Inscription
Christ Episcopal Church. Built 1846 by Jonathan Arthur of London for descendants of English settlers in British West Florida. Consecrated by Bishop Leonidas K. Polk April 11, 1847. Christ Church is the oldest public building being used in Covington. Erected by the Louisiana Tourist Development Commission, 1974.
Erected by Louisiana Tourist Development Commission
The Story
Built in 1846 by London craftsman Jonathan Arthur for descendants of English settlers who had lived under British West Florida, Christ Church was consecrated in 1847 by Bishop Leonidas K. Polk. It remains the oldest public building still in use in Covington.
Why it matters
It links a Louisiana town to the little-remembered British West Florida colony and the English families who carried their faith into the American Gulf South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Gulf Coast of the 18th century was a chessboard for empires. Spain, France, and Britain all pressed their claims here, and the region changed hands more than once. For a time, the stretch of coast that would become part of Louisiana and its neighbors fell under British control, in a colony known as British West Florida.
That brief British presence brought English-speaking settlers into the Gulf South, families who carried their language, their customs, and their Anglican faith into a corner of the continent otherwise shaped by French and Spanish Catholicism. When the political map shifted again, many of those families — and their descendants — remained.
By the 1840s, when this church was built, that heritage was a generation or two deep. The community of English descent that raised Christ Church was keeping alive a religious tradition rooted in that older colonial world, now firmly inside the United States.
People & events
The church was built in 1846 by Jonathan Arthur, a craftsman from London — a fitting choice for a congregation descended from English settlers, to have their house of worship raised by hands trained in England itself.
The following spring, on April 11, 1847, the church was consecrated by Bishop Leonidas K. Polk. Polk was a notable figure of the American Episcopal Church in the antebellum South, a leader in extending the church across the growing Southwest, and his presence marked Christ Church as part of a wider effort to plant the faith in this frontier region.
The congregation it served traced its identity to descendants of English settlers who had lived under British West Florida — a lineage that gave the young church a distinct sense of where it came from. Christ Church has endured as the oldest public building still in use in Covington, a rare survivor of that era.
Its place in the American story
American history is usually told as a story of the original thirteen colonies and their westward expansion, but the Gulf South complicates that tidy picture. Here, English-speaking Protestant families arrived not from the Atlantic seaboard but through a British colony on the Gulf — a reminder of how tangled and contested the map of early America really was.
Christ Church is a tangible link to that little-remembered British West Florida chapter. It shows how a religious tradition and a community can outlast the empire that first brought them, carrying an English inheritance into a region that would become thoroughly American.
That a modest 1840s church remains the oldest public building in continuous use in its town speaks to something larger, too: the way houses of worship often become the most durable institutions in a community, holding memory and identity across generations of change.
If you visit
Come to appreciate a building that has simply refused to stop being useful. As the oldest public building still in use in Covington, Christ Church has been part of daily life here since before the Civil War — a rare thing to be able to say of any structure.
Look at the craftsmanship with the knowledge that it came from a London builder in the 1840s, made for a congregation proud of its English roots. There is a quiet story of continuity in that: an English craftsman, English-descended families, an Anglican tradition, all meeting on the Louisiana Gulf.
Let the church anchor a slower exploration of the town around it. A building this old has watched everything else grow up beside it, and standing before it is a good way to feel the long reach of the region's layered, empire-crossed past.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jonathan Arthur
- · Leonidas K. Polk
Themes & tags
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