St. Mark's Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church

Episcopal Church (United States)

The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

 located at Boonsboro

Boonsboro, Maryland

Boonsboro is a town in Washington County, Maryland, United States, located at the foot of South Mountain. It nearly borders Frederick County and is proximate to the Antietam National Battlefield...

, Washington County, Maryland

Washington County, Maryland

Washington County is a county located in the western part of the U.S. state of Maryland, bordering southern Pennsylvania to the north, northern Virginia to the south, and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia to the south and west. As of the 2010 Census, its population is 147,430...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Originally formed within Saint John's Parish

Saint John's Church (Hagerstown, Maryland)

St. John's Church, or St. John's Episcopal Church, founded in 1786, is an historic Episcopal church located at 101 South Prospect Street in the South Prospect Street Historic District of Hagerstown, Maryland...

, it was incorporated into Antietam Parish in 1899.

The original portion of the church was built in 1849 and is rectangular in shape, with two-foot-thick walls, 17 feet tall, constructed of rough-cut native limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

. It is enclosed by a stone wall which was built in 1922 and surrounded on its eastern, southern, and western sides by a cemetery of 173 markers. The church features a wooden portico covered with a wooden Gothic Revival roof and a steeple, which rises another 12 feet and includes the original bell and electronic carillon

Carillon

A carillon is a musical instrument that is typically housed in a free-standing bell tower, or the belfry of a church or other municipal building. The instrument consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells, which are played serially to play a melody, or sounded together to play a chord...

. The building was closed for a brief period following the Battle of Antietam

Battle of Antietam

The Battle of Antietam , fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000...

 in 1862, but was reopened and has held services continuously ever since.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in 1999 as "St. Mark's Episcopal Church-Lappans."

External links

• Church website
• St. Mark's Episcopal Church-Lappans, Washington County, including photo from 1973, at Maryland Historical Trust