This is one of the most exuberant late-nineteenth-century churches on the Eastern Shore, and although built in 1880, its roots extend back to William Claiborne’s Anglican settlement at Kent Point in 1632. As the first in the colony, the congregation is referred to as the cradle of the Anglican Church in Maryland. The Reverend Richard James was invited here from England to minister to a congregation eager to continue worshipping as they had in their English homeland. Claiborne immigrated via Jamestown, and much to the chagrin of Lord Calvert, settled here to claim Kent Island for the Virginia colony. Although Calvert successfully asserted his authority in 1658, political upheavals in England forced Maryland to accept Anglicanism as its official religion in 1692, with Christ Church becoming one of thirty sanctioned parishes.
The congregation moved to Stevensville to construct this church, its fifth, incorporating bricks from the foundation of the previous building as a symbolic gesture. The church exhibits a rich display of materials and textures to include novelty siding and wood shingles within a framework of chamfered rails and stiles, and a steeply pitched slate roof, lancet brick chimney, and frame bell tower with open bell cote. The soaring interior contains a combination of queen post, king post, and hammerbeam truss configurations, springing forth from oversized brackets.