St. Mark’s Church in Ortega

For the last century, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has served Jacksonville’s Ortega neighborhood and its generations of members. While the spiritual roots of the church go back to the nineteenth century, it wasn’t until November 1919, when a lanky, young clergyman pedaled his bicycle across the St. John’s River to embrace a new assignment. Douglas Bagwell Leatherbury climbed the steps of a small wooden building known in the neighborhood as “The Little Brown Church.”

It was a humble beginning in a simple building. Some years later, one parishioner remembered the experience fondly, saying, “It was the most modest building you could possibly imagine. You’d open the door into this sweet, small church . . . Simplicity was definitely what the little church represented.”

It wasn’t until May 15, 1922, that the growing congregation’s thirty-two members received the joyous news that their “Mission of St. Columba” had been granted parish status. In an unusual step, the members decided to rename the church as St. Mark’s Church and Leatherbury was called to be its rector. This beautiful commemorative book—St. Mark’s Church in Ortega, The First One Hundred Years, 1922–2022—celebrates the beginning and growth of the church, a century of faithful parishioners, and its history of numerous missions and growing ministries.