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Peter Gray Sears was born in 1866 in Oxford, Mississippi. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mississippi in 1885, he attended General Theological Seminary and was ordained a deacon in 1887 and a priest in 1890.

In 1889, Sears began serving as the rector of Christ Church in Holly Springs, Mississippi, a position he held for ten years. While there, he reorganized St. Thomas Hall, a military boarding school for boys. He served in different missions in Mississippi until 1905, when he became the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. He held the Christ Church rectorship until his resignation in 1926, after which he accepted an appointment as rector emeritus. He then became the first rector of Palmer Memorial Chapel in 1929, remaining there until his retirement in 1936.

Peter Gray Sears died on January 26, 1942.

A fourth-generation minister, Samuel Orr Capers was born August 2, 1899 in Anderson, South Carolina. He attended the University of Texas and then the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he was ordained to the diaconate in 1926 and to the priesthood in 1927. He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1959.

His first pastoral assignment was Trinity Episcopal Church in Pharr, in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas, where he served during 1927 and 1928. After working briefly as rector at Saint Mark’s Church in San Marcos, Texas, Capers transferred to Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, where he served from the end of 1928 until 1930. He then became the rector of Christ Episcopal Church, also in San Antonio, where he remained for the next thirty-seven years. He retired as rector emeritus in 1967. During and after his career he was active in numerous service organizations such as the Salvation Army and the San Antonio Association of the Blind, as well as working on behalf of the San Antonio military community. Capers died on June 17, 1984.