 Today's talk is about a community institution that most of us are really familiar with the building out in Hanley, but it starts way before that. We're glad to welcome Tar, who is going to speak to us, and he says he's going to do his own introduction. Oh! So in that case, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, I'm Terry Tark. I will be giving the slideshow and talking about it. I'm accompanied here by Liz Bell, who's been a... I've been a member of the Wrestling Methodist Church for 25 years. Liz has been here just a little bit longer. Oh, yeah. So she knows a little more of the history than I do. We'll be glad to have a question and answer session after we do the slideshow, if people have particular things they'd like to talk about. One of the reasons why the two of us are here is that back in 2006, we wrote the latest history of the Wrestling Methodist Church. And that's 12 years ago. It's not updated again, but that was a lot of work. Anyway, start off with just a little bit. Methodism started in England back in 1738 with John and Charles the Wrestling. It started as a small group and then kind of expanded fairly rapidly. And it was eventually brought to the United States in 1760, mostly in the middle of the United States. In 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was formally founded in the United States. That's our beginning of our real roots here. Shortly after that, in 1800 and 1803, the Church of the United Brethren and the Evangelical Association were both formed. And both of them with tenets, concepts, basic backgrounds, were very, very similar to the Methodist Episcopal Church. In fact, so similar that in 1946, those two, the Church of the United Brethren and the Evangelical Association, combined into the United Evangelical Brethren Church. And then in 1968, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church combined into the United Methodist Church that we are today. As we go through some of this, Methodist churches in the Amherst area had some slightly different names of different times and then been able to really resolve those differences. It was the Methodist Foundation at one point and some other stuff. But it's all basically the same group, just slightly different names at different times of the history. Methodism in this area started fairly early with Methodist groups in Leverett, Bellam and Hadley in the early 1800s. The Methodist Episcopal Church opened in Pelham in 1831 and it stayed as a Methodist church until 1936 when it became the Federated Church of Bellam. And then again in the United Church of Bellam in 1959 and the United Church of Christ in 1852. That's the congregation. It kind of lost its Methodist roots as it combined and shifted around and everything and it eventually closed to a few years ago. We've not been able to find any information about the Methodist groups in Leverett or early Hadley anyway. Part of the reason for this is that Methodism early on services were held in people's houses with itinerant preachers that rode horses between churches and stuff. So there were very few records, very few historical things that might have survived. The first real Methodist church in this area opened in 1842 in Cushman, way out in the sticks as far as downtown Amherst is concerned. And it remained in use until 1957. At that point the Cushman Church and the Amherst wrestling church combined and everything moved to North Levin Street and the Cushman building was eventually sold in 1968 and it was torn down and it's now vacant lot. It's right here, it's right next to the railroad tracks. All that's left of it is a parking space for four cars and an empty lot. That's all that's there between the railroad tracks and the house that's right here. This is the Cushman Church. It looks so much like the Cushman Church. There's a great difference in size. The largest, this may have had 60, 70 members at the most. This was a very small building. The North Amherst Church. In South Amherst there was a Memphis congregation that started in 1848 and then disbanded in 1975. This was somewhere around Bay Road and East Street but I cannot find anything that says exactly where it is. Again, they probably met in people's houses. So it may be one of these farmhouses that's still there. This is the period of your Mr. Covell. This is about that time. William Covell. That's his next slide. We're coming into the center of Amherst. First services in downtown Amherst were held arranged by a Mr. Cutler. That's all the information we have in our records. Near College Hall, so very close to Amherst College. That was in 1865. A couple of years later he moved out of town because he needed to buy land and nobody would sell it to him because he was a Methodist. We're not that bad. There's some other reasons. Why his factory burned for one thing and the property was owned by the houses and by 1977 they had other interests. Services in town went away. In 1874, somebody tried having services again. A couple of the rented halls, the J.A.R. Hall and Parmentators Hall. That is my question to you because I have not been able to find where either one of those were. Parmentators Hall is the name I associate with East Amherst. As far as the J.A.R. Hall, yeah. If you ever come up with where they are, please let me know because I've been trying to figure it out and I guess I haven't come here to ask. I did ask the Special Collections Unit in the library and they were unable to find any of them. I think I would help you with there. Okay, great. Thank you. So anyway, these were very early attempts in downtown Amherst. None of them were wholly successful. Things eventually became a little more successful and in 1878, there were enough Methodists in the area that they could build a church. But that's enough people. Whoever can pay for it. But how many people, do you know about how many people went to church at that point? Again, probably 60, 70, somewhere in there. This was built at Whitney and Main Streets. The building is still there. It's now TIA Architects and Mothel Center. Having built the newest building, the interesting parts for us is they did it in six months and it's $7,000, just under $8,000. Fully paid for two years later as we're looking at mortgages. Now, a couple things about this. They built the church. A couple years later before they built the horse barns to put the horses in for everybody's buggies that they used to get there. They didn't get a furnace in it until 1894. And then they got an organ in 1905. Now, that organ, part of that organ is in our church now. In 1972, somewhere in the 70s, that organ and another one from Rhode Island were combined into one instrument. And that was put into the church in North Pleasant. And then when we built the new building, it was completely taken apart, rebuilt, and it's now in our building. And the interesting thing for me anyway is a month ago, we discovered that the S.D. Organ Company has got a museum of a proud organ. And several of us went up there and our organ has got to play their instruments up there. And we were able to go through the records and find some information about this S.D. organ. That's quite a place. We've been there. This is the size of two of these rooms. But it's got all kinds of organs in the play, and a lot of fun. Anyway, eventually in 1952, we sold that building to the Grange, and then they at some point sold it to the TIA architect. While the alarm is the same sort of time period, we acquired a arsenage, some place to put our minister, so we didn't have to keep renting places for him, which meant that we had a permanent minister by this time, not riding back and forth and stuff. Betsy Locke, in her will, she gave a house and some land to the church with the intention of having a arsenage either in that house or a arsenage built. We sold the house, we built the arsenage on her land. The only problem was in 1913, the electric company wanted to run a power line through there, so we sold the arsenage to the power company, and then we had to go back to renting the arsenage. Again, I cannot find a record of where this house was. Between 1913 and 1935, we rented arsenages, and there were a number of them. The last two I've got records of were number 7 and number 45 High Street, which is just a block away from the church, just a block west. Right now, there's the framing shops in one of those locations, and the 45 is just a couple houses to the north of that corner. In 1935, we built a arsenage next to the church, just to the east of the church. And it's still there. It's also owned by the architecture firm. For the information we got, it seemed like it was a pretty nice house. We eventually sold it and moved on to other places again. Back in 1918, we decided that the old church was too small and too old, and so they had a proposal to build a church downtown. One of the reasons why they wanted downtown was that it was too far away from downtown. They wanted something that people could get too easier. I walked there three or four times a month. It's what, five blocks between downtown and Whitby Bay. But in that time period, you know, it's good. I think that if you have a list of initial congregants of the Main Street Methodist Church, you would find that old neighborhood had methods. I'm pretty sure. It was as far as neighborhoods are concerned. It was there downtown. Their church was centrally located. But by the 20th century, we have other people living elsewhere. They wanted to be a lot more visible. I don't know if you have that coming, but it was also a time when Methodist Church was encouraging units near the landland colleges to serve students who were coming and just who were coming. We would be right in the center of downtown next to both of us. Cross with St. Virginia. Right, Cross with St. Virginia. It looks like Trinity Springfield, too. It's a pretty big person. There are comments in the history books of records that we've got about the cathedral that was being built. It doesn't look very Methodist Street. There's a lot of Methodist churches that look like this built in that time period. This building, as big as it is, looks and everything, was supposed to cost $100,000. They thought they had all the money lined up and then there was a depression and the money just went away. So eventually they sold it in 1924. As we go through this, you will find a theme here of us buying land in the area and selling it all of the time. It held on to it. It really held on to it. You've listened to me before. During the war years, 1943, 1945, fuel oil was rationed. People couldn't get very much of it. Methodists had a very small congregation by that time. The building was just too hard to heat. The Unitarians had a very small congregation at the time. Their building was hard to heat. So the two of them got together for the winter, used the Unitarian Church for services. Methodists supplied the minister and both of them shared the cost of fuel oil. It just lasted for those two winters. But it was a really good deal during that time period. In 1950, we decided we just could not be in that old Whitney and Maine building anymore. So in 1950, we started construction on the building on North Pleasant Street, 365 North Pleasant, and we completed it 14 months later for $125,000. This was our home until 2006. In 2005, we sold the building. We have several properties right there. We sold them mostly to Mercy House, who continues to use it as a church. We shared the building with them for 2006, the rest of 2005 and 2006, until we were able to move into our next new building. This one, 1953, we bought a building up the hill to the east of the North Pleasant Church for our horse niche. This was two houses that were moved out of the common area, brought here, combined into one, and when you're dealing with that house, you know it's two houses. Nothing goes from one side of the house to the other. It's all really kind of the same. Yes, yes. And we still use it as our percentage today. With the North Pleasant building, we had a number of problems that really caused programming issues and to some extent religious issues for us. Our facilities were split between two buildings, the church and the house that is just to the north of the church. That was our offices and some meeting rooms. Everything was on six levels. So to get to anything, you had to climb stairs. The bathrooms were in the basement. The basement was met at times. The classrooms were in the basement. The classrooms got wet. We had 12 parking places. We had, again, a study committee that looked at the building and to try to figure out how to remodel things and bring it up to code and all that. We would have had to put in an elevator. Doing that would have cost enough to whatever part is by our rules, by our church rules, to bring it up to every code, everywhere, all at the same time. Which meant that it was going to cost just under two million dollars without giving us any more parking places. We happened to own Property and Hadley. Five or six years before this, about 20, 25, 30 years before that, somebody had bequeathed some Exxon stock to us. Five or six years before we started the study committee for this building, Property and Hadley became available. We sold the Exxon stock, we bought that property. And it was just a transfer of assets. We weren't sure what we were going to do with it, but we figured it was a better deal than the stock was. Which was true because a couple of years later, prices just dropped like crazy on stocks. We wouldn't have ever been able to buy that property. So we went through a couple of year-long study committee again about what to do about it wasn't the building or to build a new one in Hadley. In 2004 we started the feasibility study. Turns out that the new building, projected construction and furnishings cost was 2.6 million. So just a little over half a million dollars more than what it would have cost us to remodel the old building. So after much settlement, discussion, prayer, hand-wranging arguments, we voted to build a new building and move to Hadley. So we sold two more pleasant properties. That gave us part of the money from the new building, got a capital campaign to give us part of the money. We've had more mortgages than we like to think about. And so we built it in construction, started in 2005 and ended in 2006. Now remember, the very first church took six months to build. It cost 8,000 dollars. This between the time we started this and the construction was two and a half years, 2.6 million dollars. A little bit different in scale. Now, granted, we've got a much different building than the old building. But just the way the process works, it's been interesting. The building is fully handicapped accessible. It's exactly the same square footage as our North Pleasant building ended house next door. 15,000 square feet. This one's all in one level. People think we built an enormous building and really expanded. We didn't. We just put it on one level. Oh, yeah, the world from the Google, I would just go forever. Yeah, that's a totally different thing. But as far as square footage, it's the same. When you were talking earlier about visibility, we were in North Pleasant for over 15 years. You could walk throughout town and ask people where the Methodist Church was. 70% of them would not have any clue. We weren't. Yes. We were invisible. We were close to the university, but we were invisible. We built an handling. Everybody knows where that building is. Now, it is on the hill. It's highly visible. We do have different programming activities out there than we did in North Pleasant. With all the concerts and stuff that are held there, people are in and out of this building all the time. So we are more visible from that standpoint. But it's a different feel for us when we talk to people around town. Because they really know where we're at. That's a good thing. That's a really good thing, yes. How do you think they didn't feel a need for parking when they first moved to a public street? In 1950, parking on the street was permitted. Oh, right. They really didn't need all that when parking. Because they had almost all of North Pleasant Street, both sides of the parking lot. And as soon as town, COVID, parking there, that made things really difficult. Yeah, except we have some parking in town. One thing about going back to North Pleasant Street, while we were there was actually the heating of our congregation. In 1966, 65 and 66, we had 376 members, which is the highest number that I've been able to find. It was definitely the highest between 1950 and today. 170, plus or minus. We're probably a little better now at reading out a membership list from people that moved and stuff, but the 376 is the highest number. It was on the books. One thing that is very unique as far as I'm concerned about our church is the mobility of the members. I grew up a Methodist in Nebraska. We probably didn't have a 5% in and out rate a year on people moving in and moving away. The wrestling is very mobile. In 1973, we had a 32% movement rate with people moving in and moving out. This is Amherst. Right, it's Amherst. It's just hybrid mobile. That really affects how our congregation works. When you look at our membership, probably 85 to 90% imports right now. There's very, very few people that are originally from the Amherst area. We do have two members that grew up in the Cushman Church. They're still that tight. They both grew up within three blocks of the Cushman Church. They still feel very close to the Cushman area. We're talking about members. Our low actually of membership was in 1983 with 126. It fluctuates greatly. At the North Pleasant location, back in the 50s and early 60s, we did have a lot of college students that came in and sampled it. We were close. Most of them didn't have cars. Religion was more important to them at the time. To me, the biggest thing is that the college didn't serve lunch at the time, and the church did. I think that was a draw. I wasn't here, but I was going to school at that time too. I know what the draw would have been. Yeah, it was very good for you. Anyway, with these little side trips here, as we're going along with this. Anyway, the new church we dedicated in October 2006, so we've been there 12 years now. What a neat picture. Keith Garber took it. He's one of our members. He does some fantastic pictures. He did a great job. Now, as I said, we have owned property all over the place. So, we're still. So, we had, we owned the Thompson House, what we call the Thompson House. It's up on top of the hill and next to the Parsonage, the 10 Pleasant Court. We used it for various church activities. At the time, we had multiple ministers, so one of the associate ministers would live there. A day start community, which was, let's talk about more, but it was a... And eventually, we used it for student housing. We rented it out. Students, some of them attended the church. Some of them helped out with some of the maintenance and stuff. And when we made the decision to move to Hadley, we sold this property. It brought an individual onto it now. Folsom House. This was the office building next door to the North Pleasant Street church. This is the North Pleasant church here. This is the Folsom House. We bought it in 1971. Daystar was there. We used it for housing for Cambodian refugees for nine years. We used it at church offices again. We had the student housing unit, and we sold it to Mercy House at the same time. What's Mercy House for them? It's a Baptist church. It's Baptist affiliated. From some Texas or somewhere. My favorite thing is that they had a missionary group to Amherst from the South. Anyway, we owned that. At one time in 1966, we bought what is now New Market Square. And we wanted to build another building there. Because even though we built the North Pleasant building in 1950, by the mid-60s we realized it just didn't meet our needs any longer. So the first study committee ended up with a lot of this. Things fell apart. We had lots of financial problems. We had some membership problems. And we ended up selling them. And that's the end of it. Unfortunately, that was the end of our property issues. At our current building, we own 11 acres. Four of it is we don't have the building on and we don't use your parking. It's used for other reasons. We did look at potentially, 10 years ago, we looked at potentially putting a parcel on one of those four acres. Again, timing just wasn't right. That was 2008. Everything was good to do. How about senior housing? Actually, the Preacher's Aid Society had talked to us a long time about building senior housing at their four ministers. It didn't work out. They were committed to a piece of land in Maine. This would have been their second project at that time. And they just didn't have the money to do two of it. So that fell apart. Where did they want to put it? We actually traded with a neighboring landowner. We wanted the farming. We thought the other piece was a little better for us. So we traded and then that really put Preacher's Aid out of the market. So it's some agriculture residential. You can put one house on it now. So that's where we're at. When did he leave outlet?