Frederick Stuart Church (1842-2/18/1924) was the son of Thomas Brownell Church (1813?-7/31/1890) and Mary Elizabeth Church (d. 3/13/1905), daughter of Col. Stuart of Battle Creek and later Marshall, Michigan. The couple were married ca. 1841 or 1842. Thomas Church was a prominent Grand Rapids citizen, lawyer and politician and one time newspaper editor. Mrs. Church is known to have been active in the formation of an early benevolent society which became the Female Union Charitable Assoc. (Lydens, p 571), and was for many years an organist at St. Marks Episcopal Church. Two photographs in this collection show the house which was the birthplace of Fred Church, on Louis St., and also another family home on Prospect St.

According to Baxter's History of the City of Grand Rapids, Fred Church almost suffocated to death as an infant, when the stagecoach in which he and his mother were riding overturned and he was tossed into the mud. Baxter also states that Marinus Harting (1815?-1861), a Dutch-born artist, came to Grand Rapids in 1854 and shortly after acquired two young students who were to become nationally known artists, Lawrence Earle and Frederick S. Church. Church himself states, in a letter to Grand Rapids Public Library Director Samuel Ranck, ca. 1920, that he left Grand Rapids when he was 13. He is known to have moved to Chicago in 1855, where an aunt had found him a job as a money delivery clerk for American Express Co. He held this position until he was 25, except for three years of service in Company A, Chicago Light Artillery, in the Civil War.

An 1886 certificate from the National Academy of Design, located in this collection, states that F.S. Church was certified as an academician.

This collection primarily documents the gift of Church's work from the Estate of famous art patron Charles L. Freer in 1920. Freer was a personal friend of the artist. Freer was aware that Church continued to exhibit in Grand Rapids and communicate with relatives living in Grand Rapids, including Caroline Campbell and Rebecca Richmond, who were strong patrons of the Grand Rapids Public Library. Church's letters to Campbell and Richmond, with original sketches, are found in their own collections at the Grand Rapids Public Library, but listed in the Appendix within this finding aid.