Julia Chester Emery’s best-known legacy is the United Thank Offering, a fundraising ministry of the Episcopal Churchwomen, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to build and rebuild churches and support mission work all over the world. Above, from 2013: Michael Smith, the Bishop of South Dakota, wearing the feathers of a Sioux chief instead of his mitre, presided over the consecration of the new St. James’s, Cannon Ball, North Dakota, as the Rector, John Floberg, holds up a famous UTO blue box. The program was instituted by Julia Chester Emery, who for 40 years presided over the Woman’s Auxiliary (now Episcopal Church Women) of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, which is the formal name of The Episcopal Church. St. James’s lost its former building to a teenage arsonist three years earlier, but those blue boxes full of thanksgiving coins helped rebuild it better than ever. (Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service)
