Wesley Chapel (Hopetown, Ohio)
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Wesley Chapel, also known as the "Hopetown Church", is a historic
church building A church, church building, church house, or chapel is a building used for Christian worship services and Christian activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 AD and 256 AD. ''Church'' is also ...
in the
unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
of
Hopetown Hopetown is a town which lies at the edge of the Great Karoo in South Africa's Northern Cape province. It is situated on an arid slope leading down to the Orange River. The first diamond discovered in South Africa, the Eureka Diamond, was f ...
,
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
,
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. Built for a
Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
congregation, the church's earliest portion was constructed in 1834; this rectangular structure forms the core of the present building. Major changes to the building since the 1830s have included the erection of a five-sided addition on the church's northern side in 1888 and significant destruction and repairs after a 1926
lightning strike A lightning strike or lightning bolt is a lightning event in which an electric discharge takes place between the atmosphere and the ground. Most originate in a cumulonimbus cloud and terminate on the ground, called cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning ...
.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 1227. Built of brick on a stone foundation,,
Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...
, 2007. Accessed 2010-12-30.
the church features a distinctive pyramid-shaped roof above the 1888 addition. At one time, the church also included a
tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...
above the entrance; the tower was the portion of the building hit by the 1926 lightning strike, and it was removed as a result. The various architectural elements combine to form a building that is distinctively in the
Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...
style. From its earliest years, Wesley Chapel was the center of community life in Hopetown. The community was settled during the final years of the eighteenth century; the oldest graves in the church's
cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...
date from the 1790s. For decade after decade, the church was the location of social activities, such as quilting bees and fish fries. Many years passed without the church being able to obtain its own minister, so it was served by circuit-riding ministers instead. Despite the prosperity brought by the coming of the
Ohio and Erie Canal The Ohio and Erie Canal was a canal constructed during the 1820s and early 1830s in Ohio. It connected Akron, Ohio, Akron with the Cuyahoga River near its outlet on Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland, and a few years later, with the Ohio ...
in the 1830s, Hopetown remained small; Wesley Chapel was always at the heart of a small settlement. In 1979, Wesley Chapel was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
, qualifying both because of its historically significant architecture and because of its important place in local history. More than forty Ross County locations are on the Register, but Wesley Chapel is the only religious building among them.


References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Churches completed in 1834 19th-century Methodist church buildings in the United States Gothic Revival church buildings in Ohio Methodist churches in Ohio Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Buildings and structures in Ross County, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Ross County, Ohio