Past churches--McCoysburg

Recently I visited McCoysburg to search for what remained of what was once a church, and before that, a school.

I recall being there twenty or thirty years ago, so my memories were rather vague. When I saw the building below, I was not sure if it was the old McCoysburg Methodist Church. It looked new, and it it now seemed to be a residence.

The steps in front, however, did not look new. And a trip to the library to find out more confirmed that this was once the church, though nicely remodeled.

The building was built as a school sometime in the late 19th century--the Jasper County Interim Report says about 1890. Early it also doubled as a church on Sundays, which was probably pretty common at that time. The public school system in the 19th century was often the Protestant school system, and a major reason that Catholics developed their parochial schools was that the dominant Protestantism was hostile to Catholicism. (Separation of church and state in its modern form is a 20th century invention.) In 1906 the congregation meeting here was organized as a Methodist Episcopal congregation. The McCoysburg school closed in 1920 and the congregation bought the building in 1921. Additions were made in 1935 and 1956. In 1974 this church joined with several others, including Brushwood, which had been Evangelical United Brethren before its merger with the Methodists to form the United Methodists, to form the United Methodist Covenant Parish. The building was closed as a church in 1985. (This information is from The History of Jasper County Indiana, 1985.)