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The Methodist Church

    When the town of Lowden was founded there were several English Methodists in the original group, so they built a church on the northeast side of the intersection of what is now called Washington and Fifth street. The house now occupying the corner has red brick on the porch and is owned and occupied by Mr and Mrs Elmer Conrad.

     The church was a rectangular building, with the entrance to the south. It had a steeple with a bell on the roof over the door. The east and west sides were the long sides, had tall, narrow windows, I think about five each. The inside of the church had a platform, with an elevation of about a foot, all along the north side. On the west side of this platform, were two rows of regular church benches, the width of the platform, which was about five feet or so long. There was a round, coal burning heating stove on the floor below these benches. The pulpit was in the middle of the platform but toward the front and the piano stood on the east side. The congregation sat on regular chairs, as I remember it. What they sat on when the church was built, I don't know.

     We didn't belong to this church. We went to the Zion Evangelical church. The Reverend Werning was the pastor. (His daughter Louise was listed in one shorthand book as having won the speed contest at the same time Billy Rose did.) The Reverend believed, as did most German settlers, the German language should not be forgotten, so all classes and sermons were in German. We were supposed to go to the Zion Sunday School but we would go as far as Deichmann's Store (now Chapman's Furniture), at 500 Main Street then go up the street to the Methodist Church. Dad who usually found out things we did almost immediately, was rather slow in finding out this. When he did find out we didn't get the storm we expected. He simply said, “Why?” We told him we couldn't read the lessons to study them and we always got scolded because we didn't know the lessons.

     About this time Reverend Werning retired and we had a new minister. He was very emphatic about the German. Along about this time the United States entered World War I, so someone made an effigy of the minister and hung it in the middle of the square, where Freund's Store and the E and A Cafe are now.

     After this we got a new minister who held classes and services in English. After that the Methodist Church had a decline in membership and was only . . .

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. . . kept going by the members of Zion and Trinity churches. In order to accommodate the members of the two churches, the Methodist church held their Sunday School in the afternoon. We went to the Zion church in the morning and to the Methodist in the afternoon. We studied the Old Testament at the Methodist School. We fought the Romans and the Egyptians and the Philistines, and we had a wonderful time while the British and French were fighting the Germans. Later on, when Hollywood made religious films, I really enjoyed them as I had studied about them in Sunday school.

     After awhile the Methodist minister joined the army as a chaplain. He came up to the school to say, “Goodbye.” He was the last minister for that church. Our school superintendent, Mr. Purdy, took over. Mr Purdy had been studying for the ministry before he became our school superintendent, so he did a fairly good job.

     The former minister had done the janitor work but with his departure, the professor asked for volunteers to clean up the place. This was in the spring. With the smoke, which oozed and often billowed from the stove every time it was started, plus the moisture from the breath, the windows were really dirty. Helen McGillvray and I volunteered. Her mother told her not to get on anything higher than a chair, but she got on a stepladder to wash the top corners of the windows. I did the bottom because I am rather on the short side; I needed a chair to do the top corners of the lower windows. On the beautiful warm spring days, we opened the windows after they were washed to ventilate the place, smell the fresh air and the grass, and listen to the humming of the bees flying around the outside of the church.

     The church and Sunday School continued for awhile until, Mr. Purdy too, joined the army. The building was in disuse for several years and later it was torn down. My cousin, Julius Behrens got the job. After he had removed some of the outer layer of boards, much to his surprise, he found honeycomb, such as you find in beehives. This explained why the church was so very peasant in summer and rather easy to heat in winter, after the fire had gotten started. The honeycomb acted as insulation. Some of it was black and couldn't be used but some of it was perfectly good and was given to relatives and neighbors. I don't know what was done with the lumber.

     After the building was torn down, it was decided to use the lot as a tourist stop. It was on the Lincoln Highway, which went past there as far as the cemetery and then turned west. This worked fine for awhile until the gypsies took over. It was decided to sell the lot as a building site, hence the house on the corner.

              Ella (Horstmann) Janes

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Editor's Note: It is said that the first religious services to be held in the neighborhood of Lowden were in the Methodist denomination. These services were held in a schoolhouse, 1 ½ miles southeast of Lowden by a Reverend Gilbruth.