The Church Altar

Dedicated to Mrs. Ella Mary McMillan
 
St. Luke’s altar, which is the donation of  her many friends to the memory of Mrs. Ella Mary McMillan, is a handsome piece of workmanship, of quarter sawed  red oak with piano finish.  In the mensa are five small inlaid mahogany crosses, representing the five wounds in the body of Christ.  In the foot of the re-table is beautifully carved the Ter-Sanctus of Holy, Holy, Holy.  The front of the altar is Gothic in style, the design comprising five Gothic arches with flowering tracery in lancet heads, the arches resting upon pillars with carved capitals.  On the first arch to the left is carved the Greek letter, Alpha and Omega, in monogram interlaced with a flourished Greek cross: “I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.”  Above the points of the Gothic arches and below the mensa a belt extends across the front of the altar, carved with an exquisite design of grapes, symbolic of the eternal sacrifice.  The ends of the altar are handsomely paneled.  Screwed in the base of the altar is a brass inscription plate with these words: “To the Glory of God and in Loving memory of Mrs. Ella Mary McMillan, died February 4, 1898.”
  
The McMillan’s,  A.P. and Ella Mary, arrived in Wamego in 1870.  Ella Mary was confirmed March 26, 1871 but they soon moved to Minneapolis, Kansas.  There Mrs. McMillan helped establish the Episcopal Church in that town. Prior to 1890, they returned to Wamego.  Mrs. Ella Mary McMillan was elected the first President of St. Luke’s Guild on October 22, 1890.  Mr. A.P. McMillan was confirmed in 1899. 
 
Mrs. Ella Mary McMillan was one of the founders of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.  She was not only a prime mover in establishing the Episcopal Church, but in overseeing the building of the church she served as treasurer of the Building Committee.  She was also instrumental in getting many of the stained glass windows installed.  Part of her obituary read “This church must stand as a memorial to her untiring industry and her uncompromising fealty.  She saw the last stone laid, the last seat placed and almost the last window secured. It was the crowning work of a shining life.”  She was able to attend church in the building which she had worked so hard to build but did not live to see it consecrated.  She died February 4, 1898 of pneumonia at the age of forty-eight.
 
 From selections of “GREAT HEARTS, TRUE FAITH, AND READY HANDS: A History of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church” by J. Harvey Littrell.