Celebrating 200: Local church predates Missouri

When Old McKendree Chapel celebrates its bicentennial this year, it will continue to hold the distinction it has held for the past 200 years: being older than the state of Missouri itself.

Constructed in 1819, the little Methodist chapel at the outskirts of Jackson and Cape Girardeau predated the state's invention by more than a year and a half.

Though the chapel no longer holds weekly services, the site -- along with the adjacent cemetery -- stands as a historical landmark, commemorating what was one of the first Protestant churches west of the Mississippi River.

The McKendree congregation first organized at the site in 1809, a few years after a man named William Williams donated two acres of land for camp meetings.

Doris Dace, who remains involved with the site and who serves as the director of this weekend's quilt show at the chapel, explained how the site's location and especially its proximity to a small creek was instrumental to the flourishing of the church.

Jim Dace laughs as his wife, Doris, helps him into an old-style preacher costume she made for him Tuesday near Old McKendree cemetery in Jackson.

"People would come together from all over and since there was fresh water right down the hill, they could camp here," she said.

After about a decade, in 1819, local craftsmen erected the actual church structure at the site and the first Missouri Annual Conference was held there shortly after its construction.

In 1921, when Missouri gained statehood, the Missouri Annual Conference was again held at Mckendree Chapel.

The chapel is plain, with rough-hewn poplar walls and a dozen or so simple pews inside. There's a stone hearth at one end and a single wooden lectern -- a later addition -- at the front.

But the chapel, Dace explained, was considered in its time to have been a rarity in several ways.

LEFT: Doris and Jim Dace are seen on the lawn of Old McKendree Chapel. ABOVE RIGHT: A brocure is seen. BELOW RIGHT: Doris and Jim Dace discuss the history of Old McKendree Chapel.

"Having wood-plank floors would have been pretty impressive for the time," Dace said. "It would have been very common to have dirt floors then. And pane-glass windows! Could you imagine?"

She said that when she now stands in the church, it feels like a sacred space.

"It really feels like a place of God," she said.

Her husband, Jim Dace, a retired Methodist pastor, said that in his opinion, the most striking thing about the site is its place in the history of American westward expansion. It makes it easy, he said, to imagine the thousands of individuals who spent time there in ages past.

The chapel stood through the Civil War in the 1860s, after which it was used as a schoolhouse in addition to a place of worship, and in 1888, the last regular service was held at the chapel. Many of the remaining congregation migrated to Jackson.

Doris and Jim Dace discuss the history of Old McKendree Chapel Tuesday, April 30, 2019, at Old McKendree Chapel west of Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

After that, the chapel became increasingly cherished as a historical site, was restored in 1926, and gained a protective steel canopy in 1958 to spare it from the weather. In 1987, McKendree Chapel was named on the National Registry of Historic Places and occasional services are held to mark special anniversaries.

This year's festivities began Friday with a quilt show which continues today. A cemetery walk is scheduled for June 16, where descendants from chapel founders are slated to visit and share stories of the early church.

The Bicentennial Celebration will be held this fall with a symposium on Sept. 21 detailing the site's history and a celebration Sept. 22.

tgraef@semissourian.com

388-3627

A brocure is seen Tuesday, April 30, 2019, at Old McKendree Chapel west of Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF