Hamilton Methodist Church — the county's first Methodist society, organized 1830

1830 – church gone; cemetery and marked site remain

Methodism reached Olive Township before the township had a town. Chapman calls James Armstrong "the Evangelist of Methodism in this county," here until his death in the fall of 1834, and records that the first Methodist society in St. Joseph County was organized at the house of Paul Egbert on Terre Coupee Prairie: eight individuals, with John Egbert as class-leader, formed — per tradition, Chapman says — by the Rev. E. Felton of the Ohio Conference in 1830, supplied irregularly until Armstrong, then presiding elder, re-organized it in 1834; it was regularly supplied thereafter. Howard's Olive section tells the same founding: the society organized at Paul Egbert's house near Terre Coupee, or Hamilton, in 1830 by Felton, re-organized in 1834 by Armstrong. The preaching place became the hamlet of Hamilton — Terre Coupee — on the Chicago Road, and Mrs. R. J. Pidge, arriving at New Carlisle in 1847, remembered that "we attended church at Hamilton, which was then the most important town of this vicinity," New Carlisle itself having no church building and no services at all in that year.

The society built the first Methodist house of worship in the county at Hamilton, and the record gives the building three dates, printed whole and unmerged: Chapman's township narrative (p. 765) says "the first church was built at Hamilton in 1838, by the Methodists, who still hold meetings in it," and the 1875 county atlas likewise dates the first church, Methodist, at Hamilton, to 1838; Howard (1907) says "the first church edifice was built at Hamilton, in 1839 and 1840," that "the church was the best one then north of the Wabash," that Oliver Emery was the architect, and that Paul and John Egbert and Jonathan Hubbard were the prime movers; and Chapman's churches section (p. 767) says the house was "dedicated in May, 1841, by the Rev. Aaron Wood, D.D." The building is gone. A tablet erected in 1965 by the Schuyler Colfax Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, marks the site at Chicago Trail and Walnut Road: "This tablet marks the site of Hamilton Methodist Church — Organized in 1830 — Erected in 1838 — One of the earliest churches in northern Indiana." The congregation's ground remains a burial ground: the Hamilton Church Cemetery, "Established 1830," stands in the Indiana Cemetery and Burial Grounds Registry, with an Indiana Historical Bureau marker installed in 2013; Howard prints, from the Indianapolis News, the ten War of 1812 veterans buried "at the village of Hamilton, on the old Chicago road." The South Bend Area Genealogical Society's church-records index carries the congregation as "Hamilton Methodist | St Joseph County," with its surviving records held through the LDS (FamilySearch) only.

Sources

1. Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, pp. 765, 766–767 — first-hand, ldsgenealogy.com transcription.
2. Howard (1907), vol. 1, Olive Township section, pp. 296–298 — first-hand, same carrier.
3. Historical Marker Database (HMdb), Hamilton Methodist Church and Hamilton Church Cemetery marker records — marker texts and 1965/2013 dates as recorded there.
4. South Bend Area Genealogical Society, index of St. Joseph County church records — read in full.