The Unspent Torch

A history of Memorial United Methodist Church from 1837 to 1958

Sometime in the year 1837, a tall, lean New Englander rode into the frontier country of northeastern Illinois. He was no ordinary backwoodsman, for in his saddlebags he carried a Bible and a hymn book, and in his heart burned a passion for the souls of men. He was Salmon Stebbins. a circuit rider sent out by the Methodist Episcopal Church to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the pioneers of Benton Township. Here on the wide prairie along Lake Michigan's shore, where the last campfires of the Potawatomis had been extinguished only four years before, Stebbins found the few scattered cabins of the settlers. Nelson Landon had been the first, coming out from Connecticut as the Indians moved toward the west; Landon had been followed by other pioneers from New York State and New England.

They welcomed the traveling preacher as one who understood their utmost needs and was willing to share their rough lot. He stood out among them, clean shaven at a time when most men wore beards, virile in physique and mentality, powerful in preaching. They listened to him in the open air when the weather was good and in some settler's cabin when the weather was bad, for there was as yet no meeting house of any kind. He rode a wide circuit through sunshine and storm, exhorting, baptizing, marrying, burying; stopping for the night wherever he could find shelter for himself and his horse, rising early the next morning and going on.

The next year Preacher Stebbins staked out some land for himself and his family on the road that ran from the bustling town of Chicago to the northern outpost of Green Bay. Where that road intersected the north boundary of Section 19 he built a log house. Here in this cabin in 1838. he called the settlers together and organized a Methodist Church. Stebbins had been the first clergyman in the township, and this little group was the first church; officially it was a part of the Fox River Mission of Chicago District of the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Methodist Church carried not only the gospel into the wilderness, but learning as well. In the Stebbins cabin a daughter, Emily, opened a school for children of the settlers. This served until the first school house was built in 1841.

The Methodists continued to hold regular meetings in the Stebbins' home and thrived, for by 1843 they numbered one hundred. Since it had become too large a group to accommodate in one house, they agreed to divide into three parts. One group decided to hold their meetings in a school house at North Prairie, at the intersection of Putnam Road and the township road. One group continued at the circuit rider's house; it was not until 1877 that the Methodist community along the Green Bay Road built a church edifice at the intersection of Holdridge Road near the site of an old inn called the York House.