Rt. Rev. Henry Champlin Lay

In the record (2)

1. 1877

   Stephen Taber gives Bishop Lay a lot for Ocean City's first church, and the bishop spends the summer preaching in the Atlantic Hotel parlor.

   "Right Rev. H. C. Lay, Bishop of the diocese of Easton, has preached several times at Ocean City this season in the large parlor of the Atlantic Hotel," the Middletown Transcript reported on September 1, 1877. In the same column: "Hon. Stephen Taber, of Roslyn, N.Y., has donated one of his most eligible lots at Ocean City to Bishop Lay, for the erection thereon of an Episcopal Church, which will be erected before the next bathing season sets in." Taber is the New York congressman who, with Hepburn S. Benson, had patented the 280-acre beach tract "The Lady's Resort to the Ocean" in 1869 and still owned lots in the town he had helped create.

   Ocean City's religious life began where everything else did — in the Atlantic Hotel's parlor. The lot came from the man who had owned the sand before there was a town on it.

   Atlantic HotelStephen Taber

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1882 · 1882-07-16

   The Bishop of Easton preaches to a large congregation in Ocean City's year-old chapel.

   Democratic Messenger, July 22, 1882: "Bishop Lay preached in the P. E. Chapel at Ocean City on Sunday last to a large congregation." Henry Champlin Lay, first Bishop of Easton, was preaching in the mission chapel that the papers first recorded in August 1881 as "a new Episcopal Church here, called 'St. Paul's by the Sea'" — the direct ancestor of the 1900 Carpenter Gothic St. Paul's by-the-Sea on Baltimore Avenue. The Berlin rector, the Rev. Mr. Lee, left in late July for a six-week rest cure at the Virginia sulphur springs, John R. Purnell acting as lay reader in his absence.

   St. Paul's by-the-Sea Episcopal ChurchJohn R. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06