[2] During his time in Oswego County, Reverend McCarty was active in missionary work, visiting and providing services in many towns and villages, and founding and building a number of Episcopal churches.

On June 22, 1835, he organized Zion Church (Protestant Episcopal) in Fulton, New York, and laid the cornerstone of its new building on August 6, 1836.

[5] During the Battle of Churubusco, August 20, 1847, Chaplain McCarty distinguished himself by ignoring the heavy fire, in order to console the wounded and encouraging the other men to go on fighting.

Soldiers across the Columbia River at the U.S. Army Fort Vancouver knew Reverend McCarty from his service as a brigade chaplain in the Mexican War.

Reverend McCarty would spend part of the week at Trinity Church, then on Sunday afternoon cross the river.

To get from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington each week, Reverend McCarty needed to use three ferries and walk over twenty miles through the wilderness.

Sometimes the ferries that crossed smaller waterways (called sloughs locally) didn't run, so McCarty would have to wade through the cold waters to continue his journey.

At the end of the report he summarizes “Taking a steamer up the Columbia, I reached Portland the 2nd of June, after an absence of fourteen days, having traveled three hundred and twenty-five miles.

[7] On July 14, 1855, the Reverend John McCarty, the only Episcopal clergy in the Washington Territory, conducted services in Seattle's small frame Methodist church.

In addition to his chaplaincy duties at the fort, Reverend McCarty conducted Episcopal services in a converted schoolhouse within the city of Vancouver, Washington.

[15] He also conducted services in the surrounding community, as well as ministered in the field to those wounded and killed as a part of the various Indian wars occurring during this time.

A number of local civic leaders, including Louis Sohns, Henry C. Hodges, and John McNeil Eddings joined and became part of the church leadership.

On April 8, 1868, he resigned as rector at St. Luke's, and he and his wife Lussanah moved east to Washington, D.C., to live with their son.

In 1873, the McCartys returned to Vancouver to participate in the dedication of a new church building for St. Luke's, built in the previous year.

Captain Edward D. Townsend, who considered McCarty a celebrity, wrote that he had the pleasure of hearing him preach in November 1855 in a room fitted up as a theatre at the Vancouver Barracks.

[8] Joseph M. Fletcher is quoted as saying, "If a stranger arrived in town Dr. McCarty would find him out and speak words of welcome and cheer.