Under the influence of William Skinner, an SPG minister, in 1717 a timber frame church was built, which was completed in 1724, to replace the broken down townhouse.

St. James Parish in Piscataway continued to grow, including members from higher up the Raritan River in New Brunswick.

Figures such as Col. John Neilson, and Brigadier General Anthony White did, in fact, fight on behalf of the Patriots.

One morning as he was preparing for service he was threatened with death if he offered such prayers, as a result of which he decided to close the church for the duration of the war.

Being a faithful cleric and a moderate at heart, he continued his ministry even during the war, worshiping in the homes of sympathetic parishioners, and often deleting the prayers for the King if he thought such would offend delicate sensibilities.

The First General Convention met in September 1785, leading to the current shape of the church we now know: with equal voice and vote for bishops, clergy and laity, the beginnings of an American Book of Common Prayer, and our own national Constitution and Canons.

In 1826 Bishop Croes reported that "by the exertion of the ladies in the congregation the church has been furnished with a new and sweetly-toned organ, the largest in the Diocese" built by Henry Erben.

Joyce appointed George Wilmot, Music Supervisor of the New Brunswick Public Schools as a professional chorister in 1885, and in 1894 he established a formally vested men and boys choir.

Miss Durham established a number of music scholarships at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers.

Father Parrish was a man of substantial financial acumen, and served St Michael and Angels, Baltimore—then one of the largest Episcopal Churches in the country.

Joyce contracted tuberculosis and became a patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and Parrish served as his priest.

After Parrish's election as rector, he worked with William Hopkins Leupp and James Parsons to establish an "endowment fund" for the parish—he also served as the church's treasurer.

Parrish's investment fund, the parish weathered the Depression relatively easily, but the Second World War was harder to avoid.

[3] The parish's second-longest serving musician, George Huddleston, arrived in 1930 and conducted the Choir of Men and Boys until his retirement in 1974.

One of the choristers from that period, T.J. Harper, is currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

She exercised a regular ministry of parish visitation, and deliberately extended invitations to all, Black and white alike.

He incorporated jazz and gospel music, introduced the Lift Every Voice and Sing II Hymnal in 2006, and developed a full-time choral program that included annual concerts, Evensongs, Interfaith choral concerts involving city churches, as well as the Muslim and Jewish community, and many other events; he also commissioned the church's Richards, Fowkes and Company organ in 1997.

Recitalists from around the world have praised the instrument, and it has been recorded on a compact disc by Aart Bergwerff, organist from the Netherlands.

Other members were part of the economic and political elite (such as Nicholas Gouveneur Rutgers, President of the New Brunswick Savings Bank; Grace Wells, founder of what is now Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and Fred DeVoe, former Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly).

[3] Christ Church is also one of the first Episcopal parishes in the United States to have an organized choral program, including paid professional musicians, since the early 19th century.

When pew rents were abolished in the early 1920s,[14] the decision was made to relocate the organ from the chancel to the gallery, displacing the Black members of the church.

Taking that as an indication they were not particularly welcome, the displaced African American members formed their own parish, St. Alban's Episcopal Church in New Brunswick, a predominantly Afro-Anglican mission, which still exists.

The Reverend Canon Frank Carthy served with great distinction from 1970-1986, and was instrumental in making connections with the city and greater community.