St. John’s Episcopal Church

St. John’s Episcopal Church. . , During the Civil War this church served as a signal station for both the Confederacy and the Union. On May 5, 1864 Col. Samuel A. Duncan’s brigade of United States Colored Troops (4th, 5th, and 6th U.S.C.T.) occupied City Point and the signal station without resistance. The 5th U.S.C.T. was the first to arrive and they captured code books and a group of Confederate signalmen who were trying to send information to Petersburg about the arrival of the Union army. For a short time the church was used as a prison until the Bull Ring was complete., The appearance of the church today reflects architectural modifications made in the 1890s., (sidebar) , Paulina Ruffin Eppes was a former slave of Dr. Richard Eppes. In 1939 when she was ninety years old, Paulina was interviewed by Judge Thomas Robertson and Roland Gill for the Work Projects Administration Writer’s Program. Photographs of Paulina and a fellow worker for the Eppes family, “Uncle” George Wilson, were found in the Eppes files of the Virginia Historical Society., Paulina Eppes spoke highly of Dr. Eppes, who, she said, provided good frame house for his slaves. They wore warm clothes and she remembered linsey-woolsey dresses and long capes worn by the women. Mrs. Eppes said the food served on the Eppes plantation was very good. Dr. Eppes had the wheat grown there taken to the local mill to be ground, and served the slaves with “seconds.” Other rations included “so many pounds of meat and so many herrings and a water bucket full of good porte [sic] Rico molasses to last two weeks.” They had plenty of the usual vegetables., Paulina remembered when the Yankees came a white sheet was run up on top of the house, in answer to the signals of the Union fleet on the river. When the shooting started they took shelter in the basement of Saint John’s Church. Then Paulina and her people ran to Hopewell Farm (now the industrial area). Dr. Eppes’s overseer took them to Eppes Island, then to Norfolk. They returned to City Point after the war and continued to work at Appomattox Manor., Paulina Eppes and her husband, Henry, lived in a Civil War cabin for twenty years until it was removed from the grounds. She recalled Christmas and corn shucking as the happiest times. Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.