Holy Trinity Episcopal Church (1886) — Melbourne, Florida

The Holy Trinity congregation dates to 1884 and its first church building to 1886, two years before Melbourne incorporated as a town. The Florida historical marker placed in 2005 states that Holy Trinity Episcopal Church was first organized in 1884 and erected in 1886, south of Crane Creek. That 1886 frame building still exists. It has been moved twice, in 1897 and in 1963, and covered in stucco along the way, so the chapel standing today is the original structure in a different place and a different skin.

Holy Trinity was the second church building in the Crane Creek settlement. Weona Cleveland's history for the Genealogical Society of South Brevard records that the first church, Allen Chapel A.M.E., was built in 1885, with Holy Trinity Episcopal Church following in 1886, and that Melbourne was incorporated in 1888. The old building now serves as the parish's Historic Chapel, beside the larger Main Church on West Strawbridge Avenue.

The land and the design came from one benefactor. According to the state marker, the church was erected on land donated by Lucy Boardman, who also provided plans for the building. It was built of virgin Georgia heart pine, and that same wooden frame has since been carried to two later sites in Melbourne.

The marker lists the founding members as the Goode, Campbell, Miller, Ely, Ellis and Grubb families as well as Hector, McBride, Gibbs and Mason. Several of those names belong to the first white households of Crane Creek. Cleveland's history notes that the Richard W. Goode family came from the Chicago area in 1877 and that C. J. Hector arrived from Australia in 1878. Space Coast Living lists Richard W. Goode, his father John Goode, Thomas Mason and Cornthwaite John Hector among the settlers in the village first called Crane Creek, and identifies Hector as its first postmaster.

The same families shaped the town's name. Melbourne Main Street reports that Mrs. R. W. Goode suggested naming the first post office Melbourne in honor of Hector, who had spent much of his life in Melbourne, Australia, and who later opened a general store at Crane Creek. The marker's founding list for Holy Trinity therefore overlaps with the households credited in these accounts with naming the town.

The church went up in a settlement that was barely a village. Cleveland's history says the community took the name Melbourne in 1880, when the first post office opened and the Goodes and Hector drew straws among three proposed names, Fountainhead, Villa Ridge and Melbourne. The first schoolhouse followed in 1883 and still exists on the campus of Florida Institute of Technology, and Dr. William M. Fee, the town's first doctor, arrived the same year. The Indian River News, Melbourne's first newspaper, began in 1887, the year after Holy Trinity was raised.

Growth stayed modest for decades after the parish formed. The same history records that the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway reached Melbourne in July 1893, that hard freezes in December 1894 and February 1895 wiped out the citrus and pineapple crops, and that when the first telephone switchboard was installed in the Alex Goode house in 1906, Melbourne had 15 telephones and a population slightly under 300. Holy Trinity's founding families were building a church for a town of a few hundred people on both banks of Crane Creek.

The 1886 site was on the wrong side of the water for much of the congregation. The marker explains that the church was located south of Crane Creek, and members from the north side of the creek arrived by boat and, after 1895, by footbridge. In 1897 the building was moved to land donated by W.T. Wells at the corner of Fee Avenue and U.S. 1.

Crane Creek was the working heart of early Melbourne, which made crossing it a weekly fact of life. Melbourne Main Street describes the late nineteenth century settlement as a cluster of wooden commercial buildings along Front Street beside the port in Crane Creek, where farmers shipped produce to market, and credits the railroad built in 1893 with much of the town's growth. The 1897 move ended the Holy Trinity congregation's boat and footbridge crossing of Crane Creek.

W.T. Wells, who gave the 1897 lot, appears again in Melbourne's civic record. Cleveland's history notes that in 1921 W.T. Wells gave the city land for what is now Wells Park, the same year the first bridge across the Indian River at Melbourne was built.

The building changed appearance before it changed address again. The marker records that it was repaired and stuccoed in 1927, giving the heart pine building raised in 1886 the stucco finish it carries today. In 1963 the building was moved to its present location, its second relocation since leaving the south bank of Crane Creek.

Today the old building is used for worship every week. The Holy Trinity parish website lists, as of October 2026, Sunday services at 7:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in the Historic Chapel using Traditional Rite I, alongside services in the Main Church, and gives the church address as 50 West Strawbridge Avenue in Melbourne. The historical marker, by its own location note, stands at the corner of Fee Avenue and U.S. 1, the chapel's home from 1897 until 1963.

The parish founded a school on its grounds in the 1950s. The Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy history states that the academy was established in 1957 as Holy Trinity Parish Day School and has occupied the historic school grounds at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church since then. It began with six classrooms, an office and 90 students, and the founding rector, the Reverend Alex Boyer, envisioned a community school with small classes and an emphasis on basic subjects.

The school later spread to a second Melbourne campus. In 2000 the academy added an Upper School for grades 7 through 12 on a 40-acre Pineda Campus, and the original Parish Campus became the Lower School for preschool through grade 6. The first class of seniors graduated in 2003. The parish website lists the Upper School on Holy Trinity Drive, so the name of the 1884 congregation now marks both downtown Melbourne and the Pineda corridor in north Melbourne.