Truro Church (Fairfax, Virginia)

Truro Anglican Church
Truro Anglican Church, Fairfax, Virginia
Location	10520 Main Street, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 USA
Country	United States
Denomination	Anglican Church in North America
Website	[2]
Administration
Diocese	Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic
Clergy
Vicar(s)	Tory Baucum

Truro Anglican Church is an Anglican church in Fairfax, Virginia, USA.

There was no official Episcopal Church in the City of Fairfax until the Rev. Richard Templeton Brown, rector of The Falls Church, organized a congregation in 1843. The congregation first met at the historic Fairfax Courthouse and then moved to the private home of Mrs. William Rumsey, a Baptist from New York. There were fourteen communicants. A year later, a plain white frame church was built on the present site of the Truro Chapel and was consecrated as Zion Church in 1845.

As Union troops advanced into Virginia at the outset of the Civil War, the congregation was forced to abandon Zion Church. During the Civil War, Zion Church was first used as a storehouse for munitions and then was destroyed. The house that is now the Gunnell House (at that time a private residence) was used as the Union headquarters by General Stoughton until 1863 when he was captured in the middle of the night by Confederate Captain John Mosby. Graffiti written by the officers stationed in the house was found on the walls in a closet on the third floor and is now on display at the Fairfax Museum.

In 1882, the house was purchased for use as a rectory. At that time it was half the size it is today and was enlarged to its present form in 1911. It served as the residence of the rector of the Episcopal Church in Fairfax until 1991 when it served first as a home for single mothers and their babies (NOEL House) and then as the offices for Truro Church. Presently, the Gunnell House is used as office and meeting space for the church.

At the close of the Civil War, the congregation of Zion Church re-formed and began to meet in the Fairfax Courthouse. Zion Church was rebuilt and consecrated in 1878.

Zion Church remained in active use from 1875 through 1933, when a new church (now the Chapel) was built to serve the growing congregation of 100 parishioners, under the leadership of the Rev. Herbert Donovan. Designed to replicate the old Payne’s Church on Ox Road, the new church was consecrated on May 1, 1934, as Truro Episcopal Church. The old Zion Church building was used as the Parish Hall until it burned down in 1952.

The Rev. Raymond Davis was installed as rector of Truro in 1948. He said that he would be pleased if he could, just once, fill all one hundred seats of the little brick church. Not only were all the seats filled, but the growing congregation began to burst at the seams as the great suburban expansion of Northern Virginia began in the 1950s. In 1959, a new and larger church was completed with a seating capacity of 500. The congregation first worshiped in the new church on Palm Sunday, 1959, and when the mortgage was paid off in 1974, a new Truro Church building was consecrated. The old church building is now known as the Chapel. Numerous services are still held throughout the week in the historic chapel, including contemporary worship services.