REMEMBERING THEIR ROOTS: OLD MCKENDREE CHAPEL CELEBRATES ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

It's been nearly a century since a congregation gathered regularly for worship inside the plank-hewn walls of the old chapel, but that doesn't diminish its importance for area United Methodists.

The Old McKendree Chapel is known as the oldest Protestant church still standing west of the Mississippi River. It was built between 1818 and 1819 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The church, found atop a hill among the shade trees along a county road near Jackson, still stands on the site where it was originally built. Now a metal canopy protects the aging roof and siding has been partially removed to expose the planks.

People still gather under the trees for a peek at their collective Methodist past. Each year, area Methodists gather to remember those first founders at the chapel. They will meet again at 3 p.m. Sunday at the chapel for the 180th anniversary of the founding.

The Rev. Monk Bryan, a bishop with the United Methodist Church who served in Missouri for 36 years, will be the guest speaker for Old McKendree Day. Members of the Perryville United Methodist Church will sing.

Joyce Hatcher Peerman still revels in the fact that the church has been standing as long as it has. "It's quite a historic place," she said. Peerman is a member of the board of trustees for the chapel.

Land for the church was donated by William Williams, who moved to the county sometime before 1803.

Settlers meet on the land for camp meetings as early as 1806. Church records show that the first person to be buried in the church cemetery, across the lane, is a Presbyterian preacher who became sick and died in 1810 after a camp meeting.

The chapel, which looks minuscule compared to church buildings today, was an impressive structure in its day, Peerman said. Comments are recorded from circuit preachers "who must have thought they were in heaven" when they arrived at McKendree Chapel, she said, because it had glass windows, wood floors and shingles.

Ministers from the conference, which included churches in Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas and Missouri, met at the chapel in 1819 for the first conference held west of the Mississippi River.

The chapel is believed to be named for Bishop William McKendree, the first American-born Methodist bishop. It is possible that he visited the chapel during an 1818 tour of Missouri, Peerman said.

For many years McKendree Chapel was the only meeting place for Methodists in the area. Cape Girardeau didn't have a church building until the late 1830s and Jackson didn't begin building a new church until the 1850s.

Sometime in the late 1880s, regular church services were discontinued at the chapel. Occasionally a minister from Jackson would come to hold services but eventually that ended too.

By the 1930s, an organization was formed to preserve the historic building and its grounds. The McKendree Chapel Memorial Association was founded in 1932 to care for the chapel and grounds. Now a board of trustees oversees the property.