Along the Ohio River east of Cincinnati, Neville was laid out in 1808. Point Pleasant in 1813. A year later, the Village of New Richmond was founded. The Village of Moscow was platted in 1816.
In Monroe Township, what is now known as the Laurel United Methodist Church preceded the laying-out of the village of Van Burensville (now Laurel) by twenty-one years. In 1816, the body of believers that would later become that church first met in Josiah Carnes’ home on Boat Run. In 1817 they began holding worship in a small chapel that was built near their community’s cemetery, then called Carmel Cemetery (now more commonly known as Laurel Cemetery).
“That was the first generation of the Methodist Church [in America],” says current church pastor Jason Sharp. “On March 31, 1816, Francis Asbury [first Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church] passed away after powerfully leading the American Methodist Movement for thirty-two years.”
The Laurel church originally went by the name of the Carmel Methodist Episcopal Church. Behind their small chapel they would hold camp meetings in a grove. It was reported in 1825 that the attendance at one of these meetings was so large that over ninety horses had to be pastured on a farm nearby, while their owners attended services.
Laurel/Van Burensville’s small cemetery-side chapel would eventually be damaged to the point it had to be abandoned, and several other church buildings followed, moving what became known as the Laurel Methodist Episcopal congregation closer to the nearby village.
A new brick church built in 1834 was damaged in an 1860 storm. A year later they rebounded with a new brick meeting house now located within present-day Laurel, across the street from their existing parsonage.
The building that stands today in Laurel, Ohio was erected in 1926, after the previous building was destroyed by fire on a Sunday morning. On that fateful day in 1924 the congregation, attending to the pastor giving the day’s sermon, was able to save most of the furniture, but due to high winds that fed the fire, not their building.
For two years the congregation was obliged to share space in the existing African Methodist Episcopal Church building at the corner of 232 and Laurel-Lindale, a building which later became a grocery store, before itself burning.
The present-day church building was dedicated November 7, 1926. Reverend Samuel Burgett was the pastor, and drew up plans for the new building along with Emerson Trees, church member and Laurel schoolteacher.
The new sanctuary’s most outstanding feature remains its still-intact stained glass windows, the largest of which is an elaborate tribute to General and later President Ulysses S. Grant, born in nearby Point Pleasant, Ohio, and donated by the President U.S. Grant Foundation of Cincinnati.
In 2010, long-time church member Geraldine “Jerry” Painter passed away, one of only two surviving church members who had participated in the present building’s original construction. (The other, Maurice McClanahan, died in 2012.)
“She used to say she loved every brick of this building,” church member Renee Miller recalls. At Painter’s funeral, stories of the thirteen-year-old carrying bricks during the building’s construction were fondly and appreciatively recalled.
It is just such rich and valued history the church wishes to both celebrate and recall over the coming weeks. Sunday, August 14th they will host a Bicentennial Worship Celebration Program at 2pm, following the regular morning service at 11am, where current Pastor Jason Sharp will lead the worship. There will be a carry-in meal held between the morning service and the celebration.
Many who have served the church in the past will be present: the late Reverend John Collins’ widow Peggy, Rev. Ed Donley, Rev. Greg Inboden, Rev. Gus Lavin, and Rev. Richard Coldwell. State Representative Doug Green also plans to attend.
All events and services of the day are free and open to everyone in the community.
Laurel United Methodist Church is located at 1888 Laurel-Lindale Road in Monroe Township, and is part of the Laurel-Spring Grove Charge. You may contact the church at 513-734-3085.
This article has been supplemented with information from the Monroe Township Bicentennial Board’s publication, “Monroe Township 1803-1903”.