Builders and designers did not stop at the sanctuary when they made stained glass windows a focus of the First Presbyterian Church of Carthage.
The church has more than 20 stained glass windows, all original to the church constructed in 1917 at Chestnut and Lyon streets.
Mary Louesa Estes, of Carthage, a longtime church member, pointed out that Christ is the central figure in all four of the large windows in the sanctuary.
She noted that three of the four windows show women important to Jesus and the Christian story. One depicts Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. Another shows Jesus’ mother, Mary, crying as she fails to recognize the Savior at the empty tomb. The third features another Mary, sister of Martha, sitting at Jesus’ feet.
“I think that’s meaningful particularly to women who come to worship there,” Estes said.
Estes said the church has been a part of her life all of her 83 years. She was baptized in the church sanctuary as a baby the Easter after she was born in January 1930, and she joined the church in 1942 at age 12.
She said she recalls years when she was a teenager and attended Advent services in the sanctuary, where stained glass windows make up the west wall.
“They were short worship services at 4 p.m. when the sun was low in the sky,” she said. “The colors through the windows were just brilliant.”
Estes said she still sings in the church choir and enjoys sitting in the sanctuary facing the stained glass window that depicts Jesus as the Good Shepherd.
“It’s been a blessing to me,” she said. “I enjoy the blues and the reds, and the effects of the colors used in the sky. It’s enriched my life.”
She also recalls the years before air conditioning, when the west-facing windows in the sanctuary would be raised slightly to catch the breeze. She said she also remembers some of the stained glass windows having to be restored after damage in a hailstorm in 1936.
“They had to repair the windows and try to match the colors to what had been there,” she said.
Other stained glass windows are in the balcony, in a parlor and in Westminster Hall, a room dedicated to church history. An upstairs classroom includes one stained glass window that depicts Jesus as a young man, talking with rabbis in a temple.
“When I was in high school, that was the window in my (Sunday school) classroom for four years,” Estes said. “That window is based on a famous painting, and that’s true of a lot of stained glass windows.”
When the church was expanded about 1990, stained glass windows on the north side were removed. The church sold some of those windows, and members bought pieces to use and to keep. Other windows were kept in case they are needed as replacements for repair work on other windows.
