The Franklin First United Methodist Church is a historic church in downtown

Franklin, Ohio Franklin is a city in Warren County, Ohio, United States. The population was 11,771 at the 2010 census. The Great Miami River flows through Franklin. Ohio State Routes 73, 123 and 741 pass through Franklin, while Interstate 75 passes on the ...

, USA. A

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

affiliated church since its founding, it is the oldest church in the city and one of the oldest churches in Warren County. The church is a member congregation of the

United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...

Early history

In 1798, the

Methodist Episcopal The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. In ...

bishop

Francis Asbury Francis Asbury (August 20 or 21, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ...

sent John Kobler across the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

and into the

Northwest Territory The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Established in 1 ...

"to form a new circuit and to plant the first principles of the

Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

" in the frontier region of the

Great Miami River The Great Miami River (also called the Miami River) (Shawnee: ''Msimiyamithiipi'') is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accesse ...

. He as well as other circuit riders made frequent stops in Franklin and the town became a regular stop for

itinerant minister An itinerant preacher (also known as an itinerant minister or evangelist or circuit rider) is a Christian evangelist who preaches the basic Christian redemption message while traveling around to different groups of people within a relatively shor ...

s until 1853, when a permanent pastor was assigned to the town. In 1825, a permanent Methodist Episcopal Society was formed in the town, with the church building being constructed in 1832. A new brick building was constructed in 1836 at the site of the present church building, but was torn down thirteen years later. In early 1860, prominent members of the church raised a sum of $12,000 to construct a permanent church. The new church was dedicated on September 16 that year and construction was finished in 1861. The new building is "in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style; having buttresses exteriorly and having a steeple which rises 120 feet from the ground". The original sanctuary and bell tower remains to this day.

Merger into the United Methodist Church

Throughout its foundation, until 1939, the congregation in Franklin was known as the Methodist Episcopal Church. During that year the church added the prefix, First, to distinguish itself from other denominations in the area such as the

Free Methodist The Free Methodist Church (FMC) is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement, based in the United States. It is evangelical in nature and is Wesleyan–Arminian in theology. The Free Methodist Church has members in over 100 ...

, Bible Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal Churches. The congregation decided to align with the mainline

Methodist Church (USA) The Methodist Church was the official name adopted by the Methodist denomination formed in the United States by the reunion on May 10, 1939, of the northern and southern factions of the Methodist Episcopal Church (which had split in 1844 over t ...

. On April 23, 1968, the congregation's name officially changed to the Franklin First United Methodist Church when the Methodist Church and the

Evangelical United Brethren Church The Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) was a North American Protestant church from 1946 to 1968. It was formed by the merger of the Evangelical Church (formerly the Evangelical Association, founded by Jacob Albright) and the Church of t ...

merged to form the United Methodist Church.

The education building addition and the bell

Construction of the 3-story education building was started in 1954 on land to the south and west of the original church. The cost for the addition's construction totaled $109,000, or $950,000 in today's (2014) buying power. The first bell was donated to the church in the early 1830s by Ransom Seely Lockwood. A second bell was purchased in 1841 to replace Lockwood's bell which had been damaged over the years. The present bell was installed in 1862 and manufactured by the G. W. Coffin & Co. Buckeye Bell Foundry of

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

References

{{coord, 39, 33, 39, N, 84, 18, 13, W, display=title United Methodist churches in Ohio