Our History

In 1841 at the direction of Bishop Stephen Elliot, a group of planters and other citizens of
McIntosh County organized a mission congregation under the name St. Peter’s Church, Darien.
A year later, the name of the congregation was changed to St. Andrew’s, and the congregation
was admitted as a parish in the diocese in 1843. The first rector was the Rev. Richard T. Brown.

The first church building was completed in 1844. It was located a short distance north of the
current St. Andrew’s church. The Civil War was not kind to Darien or St. Andrew’s. From 1862
to 1866, the parish was abandoned. in 1863, Union troops, including the 54th Massachusetts
under the command of Colonel Robert Shaw, burned Darien. This action was ordered by Colonel
Montgomery of Kansas, and Col. Shaw, who was reluctant to burn the town, wrote to his mother
about his distress over the burning. Col. Shaw was killed in action shortly thereafter.

Some healing began when, after the war, at the urging of the Episcopal church ladies of Darien,
Mrs. Shaw and some of her friends sent money to assist in the rebuilding of St. Andrew’s.
Although those funds were used to construct a church at the Ridge, members of the parish
eventually raised the funds to buy the lot where the Bank of Darien had previously stood and to
construct the present St. Andrew’s church building on Darien’s historic Vernon Square. The
building was completed and consecrated in 1879. In the years since 1879, the fortunes of St.
Andrew’s rose and fell with the fortunes of Darien’s boom or bust economy. On several
occasions, St. Andrew’s transitioned from being a self-supporting parish to a mission church and
back again. In 1989, St. Andrew’s regained parish status and has remained a self-supporting
parish in the diocese of Georgia.