The church has a storied history. Among the luminaries who worshiped at St. Peter are John Banister Tabb, the Civil War poet whose thirty eight books comprised the collection of Richmond’s first public library. President John Tyler’s second wife worshiped and was buried at St. Peter Church, and her daughter was married in the church. St. John Neumann ministered to German immigrants in the basement of St Peter. Several of the church’s rectors became bishops elsewhere. Bishop James Gibbons, later Cardinal Gibbons of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, headed the Diocese of Richmond from St. Peter in the 1870s. His desk, which is estimated to be 150 years old, is still at the church.
