←Daniel Van De Bogart

St. Paul’s and Trinity Parish, Tivoli

St. Paul’s and Trinity Parish in Tivoli can date its history back to the 1780s when members of the Livingston family asked the Episcopal church to send ministers up the Hudson River to preach for them. St. Paul’s itself was incorporated as a church in 1817. The first church building (a wooden one at the intersection of what is now Rt 78 and 9G called the “White Church” to distinguish it from its Red neighbor to the north) was consecrated by Bishop Hobart of New York City two years later. 

The current church building on Woods Road in Tivoli was constructed in 1868 after the congregation outgrew the White Church. Initially the parishioners (as was typical of the Episcopal church in America at the time) were mostly wealthy landowners, many of whom spent the summers in our area but resided in New York City, such as the prolific Livingston family. This Gothic stone church was designed by architect Lawrence B. Valk who would be well known for his churches. An acre and a half of land for the new structure was donated by Eugene A. Livingston and the cemetery land was bought for $50 from Jeremiah More. A Hook & Hastings pipe organ, built in 1879 that had been formerly installed in Trinity Church on North Road, was restored in 1970 and later installed in the Woods Road church. The interior features many plaques and markers memorializing former parishioners, such as Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, John Watts, and Johnston Livingston de Peyster

Interments made in a burying ground near the previous White Church up until the establishment of the churchyard on Woods Road were exhumed and reinterred in the new space. When the impressive vaults that line the west side of the cemetery were constructed, it was thought that they were “less liable to probable or possible desecration or vandalism than any other in the country” which was a valid concern at the time for the families of their wealthy inhabitants.

This cemetery is small, quiet, and picturesque. Today, the churchyard is still open to new burials and there is an endowment for maintenance and possibly an expansion. See stpaulstivoli.org for more information.