St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Northern Highlands Benefice

The history of St. Alban’s Church remains a puzzle since a fire destroyed our earliest records in 1932. Today, much of what we know of St. Alban’s early years is based on the oral histories of four women, all of whom were among St. Alan’s original parishioners. They are, according to one source, Martha Quinnell, Margaret Ramsdell, Mina Smith, and Julia Schmitz.

Accordind to the same source, it was on March 9, 1900, that a group of area women organized the first St. Alban Women’s Guild with two goals in mind: to build a church and to support a fulltime priest. After much hard work and many donations, the St. Alban women and their husbands broke ground and laid the original foundation in July, 1903–more than 110 years ago. In August of that same year, our fore bearers built what is currently the small chapel located on the west side of the altar.

After finishing and furnishing the building during the next several months, ST. Alban Episcopal Church was dedicated officially in April of 1904. In a 1906 article in The Church Times, the Rev. Clyde B. Blakesles, one of our early priests, describes the original parishioners as “the little band of women…(who) worshipped in private homes, in the school house, and in the Methodist building across the street, but three years ago the Ladies’ Guild, the numbering about twelve, and including the entire congregation, set about to earn money for the erection of a Church house. In two years, by their industry, they accumulated $500. With this and borrowed capital, they erected, at a cost of $1,500, a Chuch of which hey well be proud.” At the time, St. Alban’s altar was considered one of the prettiest in northwest Wisconsin.

In 1924 the Guild Hall was added, making St. Alban's an area landmark and a gathering place for decades to come. Many of our current parishioners remember church-sponsored youth dances, basketball games, and even community plays being held in the St. Alban Guild Hall.

In 1952 the congregation remodeled the Guild Hall, and we believe this is when the stage was removed from the east wall. The most recent work there occurred in 1974. Between these two remodeling projects, Mrs. Rev. Richard Warder donated land to the church as a memorial for her husband who died 1964. Along with funds from a United Thank Offering (UTO) grant, the congregation built the current vicarage in 1965.

Despite the fact there was no church for him, the Reverend A. Burton Peabody was holding religious services in and around Spooner in the late 1890s and early 1900s.He was not only a missionary to the early loggers and railroaders of the time–the very men who constructed our church when they could take time for their jobs–he was also the first Episcopal priest in the area.