Vestry:
- a room in or attached to a church in which vestments, sacred vessels, etc, are kept
- a room in or attached to some churches, used for Sunday school, meetings, etc
- Church of England
- a meeting of all the members of a parish or their representatives, to transact the official business of the parish
- the body of members meeting for this; the parish council
- Episcopal Church, Anglican Church
a committee of vestrymen chosen by the congregation to manage the temporal affairs of their church [Collins Dictionary]
Yes, yes, quite ignorant am I. Noted in “Minister accused of sex abuse landed one high-profile job after another,” Ian Shapira, WaPo:
The revelations about Taylor have shocked some Falls Church Episcopal alumni and validated the long-held suspicions of other former church families. The church, which originated in the 1730s, belonged to a parish or governing body whose vestry once included George Washington. During the Civil War, the Union used the church as a hospital. A new church report, though, revealed that its rectors and vestrymen held about 750 enslaved people in bondage between the 1730s and 1860s.
