Church of the Ascension
Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
The Church of the Ascension. In January 1836 the first Bishop of Kentucky, the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, received from the Church of the Ascension on Canal Street in New York City a "gift or loan" to found an Episcopal Church in Frankfort. The present church building was erected in 1850 with funds donated by Judge John Harris Hanna, first president of the Farmers Bank. Over. (Reverse) The Church of the Ascension - First full-time rector was the Reverend John N. Norton. Throughout the Civil War, the parish remained united. The parish founded first free school for the poor in Frankfort and furnished a home for orphans from 1859 to 1939 on this site. It sponsored the first library in Frankfort. Many of Kentucky's Governors have worshipped here. See over.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Kentucky's first Episcopal bishop, the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, received a "gift or loan" in 1836 from New York City's Church of the Ascension to plant an Episcopal parish in Frankfort, and the present building rose in 1850 with funds from Judge John Harris Hanna. Under its first full-time rector, the Rev. John N. Norton, the parish stayed united through the Civil War and poured itself into good works — founding Frankfort's first free school for the poor and its first library, and housing orphans on this site from 1859 to 1939.
Why it matters
The parish shows how a 19th-century church became an engine of civic life, pioneering free education, libraries, and orphan care in a growing state capital.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1830s, Frankfort was an established state capital, and its growth was drawing not just politicians but the full range of institutions that make a city more than a seat of government — banks, schools, and churches among them. It was in this maturing capital, in January 1836, that the groundwork was laid for a new Episcopal parish.
The help came from far away. A congregation on Canal Street in New York City extended a "gift or loan" to Kentucky's first Episcopal bishop so that the faith could be planted in Frankfort. That detail opens a window on how American religious life worked in this era: established eastern congregations often reached westward with money and encouragement, helping frontier and inland communities raise churches they could not yet afford alone.
The permanent building rose in 1850, in a period when growing towns across the country were replacing their first improvised meeting places with substantial, lasting structures. A church built to endure was a sign that a community had arrived — and that it intended to stay.
People & events
Several figures give this parish its character. The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, as the first Bishop of Kentucky, received that founding gift and set the work in motion. The building itself came to be in 1850 largely through the generosity of Judge John Harris Hanna, the first president of the Farmers Bank — an example of how a town's financial and religious institutions often shared the same civic-minded leaders.
The parish's first full-time rector was the Reverend John N. Norton, under whom the congregation did something quietly remarkable: it remained united through the Civil War. In a border state where the war split families, towns, and congregations down the middle, a parish that held together was no small achievement, and the marker records it with evident pride.
What truly distinguishes this congregation, though, is its outward turn. It founded the first free school for the poor in Frankfort. It furnished a home for orphans on this very site from 1859 until 1939 — eighty years of caring for children who had no one else. And it sponsored the first library in Frankfort, opening the world of books to the wider town.
Its place in the American story
This parish's story is a vivid case study in a larger American truth: for much of the nineteenth century, churches were the primary engines of social welfare and public learning. Long before governments took on these tasks, it was congregations that opened schools, sheltered orphans, and gathered the first books onto shelves the public could reach.
Each of this parish's firsts — a free school for the poor, an orphans' home, a library — represents a piece of civic infrastructure that a community needed and that a church stepped forward to provide. Multiply this pattern across thousands of American towns and you begin to see how the nation's schools, charities, and libraries first took shape.
That it did all this while staying united through the Civil War only sharpens the point. In a divided border state, this parish managed to be both a refuge from the era's bitterness and a builder of the institutions that would outlast it — a small, local demonstration of how faith communities helped knit civic life together in a fracturing country.
If you visit
Stand on this site and hold two images in your mind at once: the church that rose here in 1850, and the orphans' home that stood on the same ground for eighty years, from 1859 to 1939. Few spots let you feel so directly how a single parish poured itself into the life around it.
Appreciate the building as a mid-nineteenth-century structure raised by a community that had decided to put down permanent roots, funded by a local judge and banker whose name is worth remembering as you look at the walls his generosity helped raise.
Frankfort's compact historic core makes it easy to pair this stop with the capital's other landmarks, and this one adds a distinctive note to the day — not a story of politics or war, but of schools, books, and sheltered children. As you read that many of Kentucky's governors once worshipped here, you'll sense how a house of faith can sit quietly at the center of a state's civic life. Linger a moment over the list of firsts on the marker; each one was, in its day, something the whole town had never had before.
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
- · Benjamin Bosworth Smith
- · John Harris Hanna
- · John N. Norton
Themes & tags
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