The Methodists: The Circuit Class of 1831 and First Methodist Church

First Methodist worship, January 1831 — class organized April 1831 — South Bend a circuit appointment until 1844, a station thereafter — first church building 1835–36 — present congregation First United Methodist Church of South Bend

The arrival: When the Rev. N. B. Griffith came to South Bend in January 1831, there was not a church edifice in the town, nor in the entire county. Griffith had been appointed from the Illinois Conference to the Fort Wayne mission, in the Madison District. He reached South Bend on January 24, 1831, with Benjamin Ross and his family, joining Samuel Martin and his wife and Benjamin Potter and his wife, who were already there and were already members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Deep snow and cold kept the few families in their cabins, and no room large enough for preaching could be had.

The first worship: The two county histories give the first meeting on successive evenings. Chapman’s history dates the first religious exercises held by the Methodist Episcopal denomination to the evening of January 30, 1831. The jubilee sketch Howard prints dates a prayer meeting at the house of Benjamin Ross to the evening of January 31, and calls it the first Methodist worship, if not the first Protestant worship, held in South Bend. In March the Rev. Leonard B. Gurley, on a missionary tour, preached at Ross’s house and moved on, the field having been provided for by Griffith’s appointment.

The class: Early in April 1831 Griffith returned. On the evening of April 6, by Howard’s account, he collected the people in the bar-room of a small tavern kept by Benjamin Coquillard, a Roman Catholic, preached, and organized the first class: Samuel Martin and wife, Benjamin Potter and wife, Benjamin Ross and wife, Rebecca Stull, and Simeon Mason, with Martin and Ross appointed leaders. In June, William Stanfield and his wife were added by certificate and Stanfield was soon made a leader; Samuel Newman and his wife came by letter about the same time, Dr. Jacob Hardman in August, and Samuel Good in the fall. The first report of the mission to the conference, in 1832, showed 180 members, few of whom resided in South Bend, the district being a large one.

The county first: Howard’s own footnote qualifies the South Bend organization: the Rev. James Armstrong had organized a Methodist church at Hamilton, on Terre Coupee Prairie, in 1830, a year before Griffith’s class, and that society, not the town class, was the first Methodist organization in the county. Organized Methodism north of the Wabash is dated by the church’s jubilee sketch from Griffith’s 1831 appointment.

Circuit and station: South Bend remained part of a circuit until 1844. The circuit pastors named by Chapman include Griffith, R. S. Robinson, George M. Beswick, Boyd Phelps, T. P. McCool, S. R. Ball, and their successors. In 1844 South Bend was made a station, with its own pastor. A union Sabbath school had been organized in 1831, with William Stanfield as superintendent and Horatio Chapin as secretary and treasurer; the first Methodist Sunday school followed in 1835, meeting for a time in John Brownfield’s kitchen.

The buildings: A first house of worship undertaken in 1835 was badly built and not accepted from the contractors; the society met in the old log school-house, in private houses, and in a fitted-up second story at Pearl and St. Joseph streets. A frame church, 35 by 45 feet, was then contracted for, and, after it was discovered to have been built on the wrong lot and an exchange of lots was effected, it was finished and occupied in the fall of 1836, on North Main Street. A brick church, 48 by 72 feet, at Main and Jefferson streets, was dedicated on August 17, 1851. The edifice was enlarged, remodeled, and modernized in 1869–70, the basement being occupied from December 25, 1869; Howard dates the completion of the present building to 1871. A parsonage on the site had been built in 1866 and was replaced in 1905. The church held its diamond jubilee, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the organization, from May 6 to May 13, 1906.

Grace Church: The second Methodist society in the city divides its own record between two dates. Howard gives the Michigan Street Church, properly Grace Church, as organized in 1869 with 137 members, the Rev. William R. Mikels as first pastor. The Indiana Methodist history gives Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of South Bend as founded in November 1868, formed by members of another Methodist church who were opposed to an organ being installed in that church, with the Rev. T. C. Hackney as first minister and 88 charter members. Both accounts place the first Grace building at Michigan and Wayne: the Indiana history puts it at the southeast corner of Michigan and Wayne streets, with worship there until 1888, when a new building rose at the northeast corner of Michigan and Tutt streets. The congregation continues as Grace United Methodist Church.

The German and later societies: The German Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1872 by the Rev. Philip Walker of Michigan City, its first pastor the Rev. William Keller; by 1907 it had a brick church at the northwest corner of Lafayette and Wayne streets. Howard’s 1907 survey adds the Free Methodist Church, the Lowell Heights Methodist Church, the River Park Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church. Milburn Chapel, on West Thomas Street, was built in 1883 by Mrs. Clement Studebaker in memory of her father, George Milburn, at a cost of 10,000 dollars; Clement Studebaker before his death began the church at Laporte and Colfax avenues that was dedicated as St. Paul’s Memorial Church.

The congregation today: The 1831 society continues downtown as First United Methodist Church of South Bend. Its surviving early records, held in photocopy at the University of Notre Dame Archives, run from 1835 and include a constitution, Sunday school minutes, and rolls of members; the congregation’s own brief history, Fourteen Decades, was published in 1971. In the 1980s the church founded the Upper Room Recovery ministry, and in 1963 it had hosted a dinner for Martin Luther King Jr.

Sources:

1. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), “Religious” and “First Methodist Episcopal Church” — Griffith’s arrival, the January 30, 1831 exercises, the April 1831 class and its members, the 1832 report of 180, the circuit pastors, and the 1835–36 and 1851 buildings.
2. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), ch. on religious history, Sec. 1, printing the First Methodist diamond-jubilee sketch of 1906 — the January 24 arrival, the January 31 prayer meeting, the April 6 class in Coquillard’s tavern, the buildings to 1871, Grace, the German church of 1872, and Milburn Chapel and St. Paul’s Memorial; Howard’s footnote credits James Armstrong’s 1830 Hamilton organization as the county’s first.
3. A History of the United Methodist Church of Indiana, Grace UMC, South Bend entry — the November 1868 founding, the organ dispute, Hackney, the 88 charter members, and the Michigan and Wayne and Michigan and Tutt buildings.
4. University of Notre Dame Archives, ArchivesSpace, First Methodist Church (South Bend, Ind.) Records — the 1835–1861 records and Fourteen Decades (1971).
5. Michiana Life (2020), profile of First United Methodist Church — the 1963 King dinner and the Upper Room Recovery ministry.