[4] The congregation first met on 28 December 1769 and was granted a charter by New Jersey's last Royal Governor William Franklin on behalf of Britain's King George III.

The interior nave features several stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the life of Jesus of Nazareth fabricated by J&R Lamb Studios.

The colony's last royal governor, William Franklin, granted and signed a charter on behalf of Britain's King George III.

The board granted a warrant for 200 acres (81 ha) of land yet unappropriated in Sussex County to serve as an income-generating glebe to support the church.

[17] Jonathan Hampton (1716–1777), a landowner, coachmaker, and merchant from Elizabethtown, deeded lands from his surveyed town plot to the congregation on 14 December 1774 "for the encouragement of the Episcopal religion...and toward the maintenance & support of a parson officiating in said church".

[18] The congregation called for a clergyman, and the Rev'd Uzal Ogden, Jr. (1744–1822) was sent as a missionary lay reader and catechist in 1770 to the area on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

[19] The congregation's first church building was erected beginning in May 1823 and consecrated a few months later on 19 November 1823 by the Rt Rev'd John Croes, Bishop of New Jersey.

This building was located at the corner of Church and Main streets, on a tract of land conveyed to the congregation by William T. Anderson, a local attorney.

[12]: 23–24, 27 According to Snell, during the forty-five-year tenures of Dunn and Pettit as rectors, "parochial statistics from 1820 to 1867 show an aggregate of 510 baptisms, 241 confirmations, 334 marriages, and 468 funerals".

[19] To fund the construction of a new church building, the congregation sought the permission of the state legislature to sell the lands granted to it by warrant.

[9] Designed by architect Jonathan V. Nichols, the current church building was erected 1868–1869 and is an example of the Broken Ashlar or Rustic mode of Gothic Revival architecture.

It was designed in a "simple basilican style of nave flanked by shed aisles (no clerestory)", that was "patterned upon medieval English parish churches".

The cornerstone was laid on 21 August 1868 and the building was constructed of native blue limestone, with trimmings in Newark sandstone, with a roof of patterned or traceried black slate that was quarried in Newton.

[9] The site also includes an eighteenth-century Federal-style townhouse that was the home of Colonel Thomas Anderson (c.1743–1805), deputy assistant quartermaster general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, one of the parish's original vestrymen (elected in 1769) and warden of Christ Church from 1784 to 1794.

[12]: 27  Moffett, who served as rector for fifteen years, resigned from the pulpit to accept an appointment from President Grover Cleveland to become the American minister (essentially ambassador) to Greece in 1885.