St. Mary's Epsicopal Church Scholarship

The St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Scholarship is awarded to St. Mary’s members and their dependents as well as to a deserving student nominated by a local non-profit to help defray the costs  for trade school, technical school, professional certification, or undergraduate or graduate school.

The scholarship began in 1959  when Adeline Tuck, a St. Mary’s member, loaned $1,300 to a St. Mary’s college student to help pay for college tuition.  Miss Tuck died on September 1, 1959, less than 2 months after making the loan.  After her death, St. Mary’s  vestry established the Adeline A. Tuck Fund Scholarship (TFS)  in memory of Miss Tuck.  While it was called a “scholarship” fund, the TFS functioned as a loan program since Miss Tuck had intended that her initial loan would be repaid to St. Mary’s, and the repayment would be loaned to other students. 

In 1964,  Mrs. Mary Mitchell’s death added an income stream to the TFS.  In her will dated September 25, 1963, Mrs. Mitchell directed that  the “residue and remainder of my estate, both real and personal, I hereby give, devise and bequeath to St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church of Portsmouth to be added to the scholarship fund maintained by said church, the income to be used for the purposes of the fund.”  Part of Mrs. Mitchell’s estate included 10 acres of farmland on Oliphant Lane in Middletown, and St. Mary’s added the rental income from this property annually to the TFS.

The TFS went from being a loan to a true scholarship in XXXX.  And two years later, when St. Mary’s sold the 10 acres of farm land on Oliphant Lane in 2019 and added those proceeds to the Tuck Fund, the sale more than doubled the amount in the Tuck Fund. 

The most recent change in the TFS was changing the name to the St. Mary's Scholarship Fund in 2025. While the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Scholarship has evolved over the years, it still maintains the generous nature of Adeline Tuck and Mary Mitchell. 

The scholarship now reflects those blessings and St. Mary’s abundance and generosity.

The scholarship application and its requirements are available online.