Lewis Chapel Methodist Church

Lewis Chapel Methodist Church was organized at Chuckery, Ohio circa 1858 by Rev. F. F. Lewis who was then a pastor of the Milford Center Circuit. (Beers, Union County History, p. 237) The earliest members being Elihu Bigelow and wife Miriam, Mrs. Hiram Kent, James McCloud, and Joel Fairbanks.

This small white framed church faced east to Route 38 very near the intersection of Route 161. Until maybe the 1970’s, the concrete slab and steps to the church were still in the field. (As I grew up, those steps looked strange until I found out that they were the entrance to the old Lewis Chapel Methodist church.) After the church was dissolved, the building was sold and moved about a mile south. This frame church building became incorporated into a dairy barn on Gearhart Rausch’s farm (present day farmed by Carlton Rausch). That land where the church stood was returned to farmland.

In 1900 the Milford Center Circuit included Unionville Center, Lewis Chapel, Rosedale, and Irvin’s Station. In 1883, the pastor was Rev. C. A. Naylor; that had a membership of about 50 people in 1883. For a few years beginning in 1912 Plumwood was added to that circuit.

Circa 1923 Lewis Chapel Methodist Church was dissolved because of low membership and probably maintenance issues. My father remembers when the ceiling fell down on top of all the pews. As a very young child he remembered crawling in and out of the pews and having a great time with his other little friends. My dad would have been 4,he had a sister who was 2, and a brother who was 8 plus whatever other children might have been there. Soon, thereafter, the church was closed.

Mabel Berne Geyer and George Nelson Morse were married on March 28, 1904 at the parsonage of the pastor of Lewis Chapel Methodist Church. The pastor was Rev. Jas. F. Steele. (My aunt Mary thought the parsonage at that time was in Milford Center.) In 1904, the Lewis Chapel church was in the London District of Methodist Episcopal Church (Ohio Conference).

Mabel Geyer and her three oldest children were members of that church—Kermit Morse, Mary Morse, and Dorothy Morse when it was closed. They then transferred to the Unionville Center Methodist Church.

Rev. Jas. F. Steele served as the pastor of this circuit from 1902 - 1904.

- Lois Morse Barr
September 2007