Priests In 1865, a dedicated group of women known as the Ladies Society of Saint Barnabas established Saint Barnabas Hospital (Saint Barnabas Medical Center) in a private home. Eliza Titus who was the first patient gave her small estate to help in creating the first hospital on McWhorter Street in Newark, It Latter moved to High Street in 1869 and then to Livingston on November 29, 1964. When the hospital laid the cornerstone to the High Street address on June 11, 1869 (Saint Barnabas Day), the rector Rev. McMurdy, John Suydam a Warden of Saint Barnabas Church, and Dr. Sanford B. Hunt were elected to the Board of Managers of the Saint Barnabas Hospital Association. During the Great Depression (1930's), Saint Barnabas Church boasted over five hundred Parishioners and supported two priests and two organists. Rev. Robert Laughlin Pierson, priest-in-charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church (1960-1967?) was arrested with a group of 15 Episcopalian priests during the Freedom Rides of 1961 in Mississippi for trying to enter the lunchroom of a Trailways bus terminal in Jackson, Miss. Father Pierson and 11 other white priests were placed in one large cell while the Black priests were placed in another cell. He was later sentenced to four months in jail. The case was eventually dismissed, but it received much national attention because it involved clergymen and because Father Pierson's father-in-law at the time was Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. The Rev. Robert Pierson and Ann Clark Rockefeller were married in 1955. They shared an interest in social causes, like racial equality, women's rights and the welfare of migrant workers. They supported a black dance group in Brooklyn, subsidized James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie at the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA) Theater, and flew to Moscow in 1965 in a citizens exchange project to thaw the Cold War. In the 1970s the Basement of the Parish Hall was utilized for a coffee house Called "The Edge" that brought in many of the neighborhood youth. North Porch Women & Infants Center began its existence at Saint Barnabas also in the 1970s and has been moved to Park Place. In the 1980s the Gymnasium in the Parish Hall was used to minister to the community's youth. The Share program that began in the 1980s evolved into a food pantry that still distributes food twice a week. The Aids Resource Center opened 1990 and resided