The local freeholders at Broad Creek then chose a "select" vestry and completed parish organization on January 20, 1693, authorizing Col. John Addison to purchase 78 acres of ground and obtain a contractor to build a church.

Meanwhile, two other churches or Chapels of Ease were soon built within the parish, to serve communities too far removed from Broad Creek for convenient attendance at worship.

In 1719, a Chapel of Ease to Piscataway was erected at "Eastern Branch Hundred", which ultimately evolved into St. Paul's Parish at Rock Creek near Rock Creek which flows south through the National Capital and Georgetown to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and ultimately the Potomac River.

Bishop Claggett, who also served as the Parish's rector until 1809, in 1793 became the first bishop consecrated within the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (itself organized in 1789), at a ceremony held at Trinity Church in Manhattan, in the then-capital city, New York City.

Bishop Claggett also oversaw in 1793 the first confirmation of young people in the new Protestant Episcopal Church, a class of forty-four presented by the parish's third rector, the Rev.

Beginning in 1794, one of the priests of St. John's parish held services and preached in Georgetown, as well as in the older chapels in Seat Pleasant and Accokeek.

The Federal District services were initially held with a few Episcopalian families at the local Presbyterian Church then on 'M' Street through the hospitality of its minister, the Rev.

General of the Continental Army and the First President, George Washington attended services at the Broad Creek church or the Accokeek chapel across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon on numerous occasions, when inclement weather made the roads to Alexandria impassable and boat passage unsafe.

An unusual outdoor feature of St. John's is the "campanile", consisting of four uprights about forty feet high, with a canopy under which reposes a bell.