Good Shepherd Episcopal Church recently gathered to celebrate Juneteenth and to honor Joan Booker Sheppard, the church's longest-serving member.

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Longest-serving church member recognized during gathering

TRYON—Historic Good Shepherd Episcopal Church of Tryon has enjoyed a busy month of June. In addition to its usual services and monthly adult forum, the church celebrated the Juneteenth Federal Holiday on June 19 by gathering and reading the Emancipation Proclamation, which provided for the end of slavery in the United States. 

The church annually marks this day to remember that not everyone in Confederate territory was immediately free despite the fact that the Proclamation was to go into effect at midnight on January 1, 1863. Unable to be implemented in places still under Confederate control, which at the time included the westernmost state of Texas, enslaved people in that region did not know freedom until June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced at that time that more than 250,000 enslaved people were freed by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth” by newly freed African Americans in Texas and is now a Federal Holiday.

As a historically Black church, the origins of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church date back to 1886, when a Deacon reported for the Tryon City Mission. The mission was officially organized as Good Shepherd Mission in 1908. Church Services were initially conducted in a chapel in the newly established Tryon Colored School on Markham Road in Tryon. 

However, it was not until 1955 that Bishop Henry of the Western North Carolina Diocese recognized the need for a separate church building from the schoolhouse. He arranged to acquire St. Andrew’s Chapel, which was built in the early 1900s by the Coxe family, owners of the Green River Plantation (Rutherfordton), to provide a place for worship for African American families working on the property. The Chapel was later disassembled and transported to the Tryon Eastside to land donated by philanthropist Edmund Embury (and part of the site for the Tryon Colored School) to serve as a home for the African-American Episcopal community of Tryon, where the church stands today.

Tryon Mayor J. Alan Peoples declared the following Sunday, June 22, 2025, as Joan Booker Sheppard Day. This date was a special one for her because it marked over 70 years of her membership at Good Shepherd Church, our longest-serving member, during which she served on the Vestry, Altar Guild, and Scholarship Committee, and organized numerous successful fundraisers. It also marked over 40 years of her outstanding excellence in the education of children in the area as a director of a childcare center for the Isothermal Planning and Development Agency for 21 years, followed by becoming the owner and operator of Sheppard’s Little Lamb Preschool for 19 years, wthe first in Polk County to receive a Four Star Child Care License from the NC Department of Health and Human Services among numerous other awards and recognition. 

In addition to reading the Proclamation, attendees heard tributes by congregants and feasted on her favorite foods. The church sends a huge thank you to Joan for all that she has done for our church community and for the community of Tryon.

Good Shepherd Episcopal Church has exciting activities planned for the remaining months of the year. To learn more, visit goodshepherdoftyron.org.

 

Submitted by Cathy Jones