Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

Grace Church — Founded as a Mission Outreach

The movement that led to the establishment of Grace Church was begun in 1889 by the First Presbyterian Church of Montclair. The leaders of First Church recognized that all the churches in Montclair were centered around Bloomfield Avenue, and the newer section of town, north of Walnut Street, was without a church.

First Church began a fund for this outreach with a weekly collection. In the winter of 1889-1890, members of the church conducted house-to-house visits in the area north of Walnut Street and found that many families did not attend church or Sunday School because of the distance.

Trinity Presbyterian Church, the other Presbyterian Church in Montclair, joined in the outreach effort. In 1890, the joint committee of the two churches arranged to use the waiting room of the Greenwood Lake Railroad’s Montclair station on Walnut Street as a meeting place.

On June 22, 1890, the first service of this new Presbyterian mission outreach was held at the train station. The Rev. Dr. William F. Junkin of First Presbyterian Church and the Rev. Dr. Orville Reed of Trinity Church conducted the service. A Sunday School was established, which met in the station until December 1890.

South Church Is Born

At the same time that First Church was taking collections to fund its outreach to the northern part of town, members of First Church were also exploring ways to provide religious services in the part of Montclair now known as the “South End.”

Members of the church under the leadership of Paul Babcock and Dr. Arthur F. Hawes began holding cottage prayer meetings in some of the homes in the South End. In December 1889 they organized a Sunday School, which met on Sunday afternoons in the Cedar Avenue School building.

This Sunday School was the start of the South Presbyterian Church, which merged with Grace Presbyterian Church in 1949. So the beginnings of the two congregations on opposite ends of town were nearly simultaneous about 60 years before they were united.