You'll find St. Peter's Episcopal Church at Atlantic Avenue and 8th Street, right where Centre Street ends, and the parish's nickname for itself suits the spot: the "Crown of Centre Street." The congregation dates to June 14, 1858, when the Rev. Owen P. Thackara gathered a small group of Fernandina residents to form a missionary outpost. That November, Florida's first bishop, Francis H. Rutledge, laid the cornerstone of the first St. Peter's on what is now the southeast corner of the church cemetery.
The Neo-Gothic church you see today came later. Ground was broken in 1881 and the first service was held March 30, 1884. A fire early on February 24, 1892, destroyed much of the building, which was restored, and the church was formally consecrated on Easter Day 1901. The architect was New York's Robert Schuyler, who also designed the Fairbanks House and the Hirth House on the island, and his headstone is in the churchyard.
The first church has a story of its own. In 1887 it was given to a Black congregation and renamed Good Shepherd, then moved across the street off the cemetery grounds. When the city condemned that aging building in the 1960s, a replacement went up, but the bishop chose not to consecrate it and instead united the two congregations at St. Peter's. That building is now the parish youth building. The cemetery across Alachua Street began with Union Army burials during the 1860s occupation, and its oldest headstone, marked "Jeffrey's Boy," is from 1866.
Sunday services are at 7:30, 9 and 11 a.m., with a Celtic service on the fourth Sunday evening, and the parish's services page has any changes. The Amelia Island Museum of History's Friday ghost tour meets at 6 p.m. in front of the cemetery behind the church. From there it's a straight walk west down Centre Street into historic downtown.