Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Fruitland Park
FL

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Who we are

We are a mature parish, made up of area residents and many who have relocated here after retirement. We bring a wonderful diversity of life and work experiences to our life together at Holy Trinity.
We worship and play together as a parish family, and look for ways to volunteer our abilities to serve others. We promote outreach endeavors and programs that respect the spiritual growth of those around us. We volunteer at local schools, hospitals, and assisted-living facilities. As many of us are over 65 years of age, clergy pastoral care is very important to us. We are predominantly retired, and live in central Florida throughout the year. Nearly nine in ten make an annual pledge, and keep it.

For the past eight years, we have been ably served by a Priest-in-Charge; it is now time to partner with a full-time Rector.

Our ministries

Our ministries at Holy Trinity represent the many interests and activities of our membership. We have a dedicated Altar Guild of over twenty members who prepare the church for worship services. There are lectors, ushers and Lay Eucharistic Ministers/Visitors who assist with worship. There is an excellent music program and a choir of volunteers. We are most appreciative of their efforts. Fellowship activities include a monthly Holy Hackers golf outing, dinner groups, Bible study and hospitality on Sundays between services.

Three new committees were formed in the past year, responding to needs within the church. A bereavement support group is now operating in the parish, with services offered to both members and nonmembers. The purpose of this group is to give each member strength and hope through sharing. A newcomers committee has been established to more fully incorporate new members into the life of the parish. This group sponsors social events and in-home visits to tell new parishioners about Holy Trinity's numerous activities. And lastly, a Membership Committee has recently been formed to actively recruit new members who have recently relocated to the area. The diocese is looking to Holy Trinity to serve these newly-arriving individuals, and we anticipate that our new Rector will take a leadership role with this group.

Outreach programs are an integral part of our ministries, and our major focus is Holy Trinity Episcopal School. Founded and sustained by the church since 1996, our school is the only Episcopal school in the diocese that focuses on learning-challenged children. The school offers a faith-based education program in the Episcopal tradition.
As an important outreach ministry within our immediate community, the vision of the school is to continually improve, and grow the programs and enrollment. There are currently 24 students at the school, and a plan to expand the number of students and staff is currently under development. Our new Rector will be an integral part of the school, along with the Vestry, the Head of School and the school support team.

We have joined with other parishes in the diocese and contribute to a ministry to street children in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and also support various local projects.

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http://www.holytrinityfp.com/

Rev. Samuel Nsengiyumva

Rector

(352) 787-1500

(352) 787-8063

The Vestry of Holy Trinity Church and School is very pleased to announce that The Rev. Samuel Nsengiyumva has accepted the call to serve as our next Rector, effective February 1, 2021. A seasoned Episcopal Rector and Priest, Fr. Samuel is transitioning from The Church of the Ascension in Westminster, MD, where he served for six years; his previous parishes were located in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin and Angola, Indiana.

Fr. Samuel holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies with minors in Christian Ministries and Community Development from Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya, and a Master’s degree from the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. He will celebrate his first services at Holy Trinity on Sunday, February 7, 2021 at 8am and 10:30am. The Vestry and people of Holy Trinity look very much forward to welcoming Fr. Samuel and his wife, Rose, to our spiritual family and community!

Peggy Barry

Parish Administrator

(352) 787-1500

(352) 787-8063

From the south (Mt. Dora, Eustis, Tavares, Leesburg) on US 441/27, travel approx. 2.5 miles past the Walmart at M. L. King Blvd. Turn left on to Spring Lake Road between the Sunoco Station and Campers Corner. The church will be about .6 mile on the right.

Coming from the north (Lady Lake, The Villages) on US441/27, Spring Lake Road is a right hand turn at Campers Corner and the Sunoco Station. The church will be on Spring Lake Road about .6 of a mile on the right.

It’s also easily accessible from CR466A if you’re coming from the southern part of The Villages. Traveling east on 466A, drive about 2.3 miles past Colony Plaza, turn left on to Poinsettia Avenue and follow it to Spring Lake Road. Turn left and the church will be about .2 of a mile on the right.

Sunday Holy Eucharist 8am and 10:30am

Sunday Christian Adult Education 9:30am

Wednesday Holy Eucharist & Healing 11:30am in Grace Chapel

2023 Holy Week Services

Maundy Thursday/Agape Meal| 5:00 p.m.
Good Friday at Noon & 6:00 p.m.

Saturday Easter Vigil at 8:00 p.m.
Easter Sunday Worship 8:00 & 10:30 a.m.

Service Times last updated on the 9th of April, 2023

Holy Trinity's Beginnings

Early in 1882 a young Englishman of noble stock, Granville Chetwynd-Stapylton, came to the forested frontier of then Sumter County in Central Florida to grow oranges and to reap the financial rewards from growing them. To that end Stapylton established a learning center of sorts, Stapylton and Company, on the southeast side of Zephyr Lake where he built a boarding house, a large stable and a dining hall with an attached kitchen. Then he recruited young, well-educated, single men from Great Britain and its colonies to come, learn and and grow citrus on company land—all at their expense. Other British folks emigrated to the area and settled on both sides of the Florida Southern Railway tracks in an area later described as ten miles by three miles. The railway's Orange Belt Route tracks paralleled the west side of present US Route 441/27 in now western Lake County that remained in place until 1982.

nterest in the settlement was slow but by the end of 1885 about 70 men, women and children had settled in the colony that by then was called the Colony of Chetwynd. Most were Anglicans. And they rode horses—for transportation and for racing. While local lore claims that debaucheries observed at the races by a visiting English priest provided an obvious need for a church, that story is probably untrue.

Wrote Thomas Vincent, vestry secretary in 1886, "The want of an Episcopal Church and a clergyman in the English Colony known as Chetwynd, Lake County, Florida, has been for some time felt, and a movement has been made to obtain subscriptions to erect a Church in the colony. The only available services are those few held by the Rev. Dr. [John B. C.] Beaubien at Leesburg and Gardenia [Fruitland Park]. These meetings being considered as of too irregular a type to meet our needs, a general meeting of the colony has been called for July 3, 1886, to assemble at a general place, Stapylton & Company's dining hall to discuss what steps shall be taken to provide the neighborhood with a church and a rector."

As a result of this meeting permission was sought and ultimately granted by the Diocese of Florida to establish a mission. The first service of the Holy Trinity Mission, Chetwynd, was conducted December 19,1886 by The Rev. John Campbell Wheatley Tasker of London—under the authority of the Bishop of London—at The Hall on Zephyr Lake. It was Stapylton, the church's first senior warden, who had persuaded Tasker to come. In the meantime a committee formed to explore sites for the church. A decision was finally made January 28, 1887 to build a church on the present site—about half-way between Fruitland Park and Stapylton’s little town, also called Chetwynd, on Lake Ella—as the crow flies.

On behalf of the Diocese of Florida Stapylton purchased a one-acre site from a freed slave, Samuel J. Tanner, for $20.00 March 24, 1887. Until the church was built services were held in an old barn on John Vickers Smith's land on nearby Lake Geneva. Tasker stayed only a few months. The new mission was then served by supply missionary priests from Florida as well as other nearby states. Finally the Rev. Joseph Julian of Ohio arrived to serve missions in the area including the St. James Mission in Leesburg where he and his wife Sarah resided. Julian conducted Holy Trinity's first service in the new Carpenter Gothic church with a bell tower December 2, 1888; it was consecrated the following July. For nearly 87 years Holy Trinity would be served by the rector of St. James—Julian being the first. As for the bell tower, a haven for bats and a target of lightening strikes, it was removed in 1925 and never replaced.

Because the local colonists lacked financial resources, all but about $800.00 of the total cost of $2,500.00, was raised through the efforts of Stapylton’s father, the Rev.William Chetwynd-Stapylton, who helped organize a bazaar at his parish near London, England, to benefit the new mission.

Coincidental with the church's consecration in 1889, a white wooden lych gate, said to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest lych gate in the country, was built. Originally designed for either the coffin or the pallbearers to rest on its benches before processing into the church it is now used for the deceased's family to rest for prayers with the clergy before entering the church for the Burial Office. Emily Tatham, a life-long English Quaker who regularly attended the Episcopal church, donated the funds.

In October 1894 the colony's first priest, John Tasker, donated a little over 11 acres adjacent to the church acre. Some of this land was designated for the Chetwynd Cemetery—now called Holy Trinity Cemetery. In the late 1960s a small Sunday School building was constructed followed by two additions, including a large parish hall, in the 1970s. Two decades later an education building, now the home of Holy Trinity Episcopal School, was built.

While many of the colonists moved on after four or five years the devastating Great Freezes of December 1894 and February 1895 that wiped out nearly all of the citrus trees in Central Florida, was the death knell for the Colony of Chetwynd. But Holy Trinity, today the only remnant of the short-lived colony, has—in grand times and hard times—prayed, persevered and remained open for worship.

To recognize its architectural and historical significance and to encourage its preservation, the church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places September 30, 1975. March 12, 2011 the Timucua Chapter of the Colonial Dames of the 17th Century placed a historical marker near the lych gate.