The history of Trinity Episcopal Church in Belleville Michigan began in 1884 when Violet Clark, the daughter of a Quaker father and an Episcopal mother, traveled to Ypsilanti to ask the rector of St. Luke's to conduct Episcopal services in Belleville. The Rev. Thomas W. MacLean agreed, and held services at 3:00pm, on Sunday afternoons, in the Baptist church at Main and Third Streets for a group of Episcopalians which became known as Grace Mission. Rev. MacLean and other clergy from St. Luke's continued to hold Sunday afternoon services until sometime in 1890.
Grace Mission, wanting a church of their own, erected a wooden church on a lot they purchased at Main and First Streets in Belleville in 1890. St. Luke's donated an altar, windows and a lectern. The Gothic-style sanctuary seated 200 parishioners.Violet Clark's brother, William A. Clark of Bay City, donated a bell for the church's belfry in 1892, in memory of their mother Sophia Clark, who died in 1881. The Bell is engraved: The Gift of Wm. Clark, Bay City to the Episcopal Church in Belleville in Memory of his Mother, Sophia Clark who died on April 10, 1881.The first Rector of Grace Episcopal Church was Rev. S Trivett, an Indian Missionary from Canada.
After World War I, many people lost jobs in the factories in the area and had moved away, church membership dwindled and Grace Episcopal Church was forced to disband. The church was sold to St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Mission in 1921. St. Anthony's used the church until 1956 when they built a new church and Grace Episcopal Church was torn down soon after that. Father Albert Folta of St. Anthony's, realizing the importance the bell held for the Clark family, returned it to Aleck and Frances Clark Shook, where it was stored in the barn behind their house on East Huron River Drive.
A few families of Grace Episcopal Church had remained in the area after Bishop Williams sold it to St. Anthony's in 1921. In 1942, they and a number of new Episcopal families in the area, banded together to start a new Episcopal congregation in Belleville. “Grace” Baptist church in Belleville was going strong at the time so they needed a new name. Trinity Episcopal Church in Hudson had loaned the new congregation altar fittings so they decided to adopt the name “Trinity” and in 1943 Trinity Mission in Belleville was born, and like the previous Grace Mission, was under the sponsorship of St. Luke's in Ypsilanti.
For a while, services were held in the farmhouse of Aleck and Frances Shook, followed by the Seventh Day Adventist Church and then in the Van Buhler's ice cream parlor. Aleck Shook served as lay reader, and an ordained priest came once a month for a Eucharist.