Church History

Revering the Past: Unveiling the Timeless Charm of the Old Chapel's History

Creation of A Storybook Chapel

On June 18, 1830, Nathaniel Armstrong made a significant contribution by donating "one acre and twenty-seven poles strict measure" to establish a burying ground and meeting house for the Methodist church. Following the construction, the building was completed in 1831, and to this day, it stands as the cherished Old Chapel of our church and holds a service every Sunday since it's creation. Nathaniel Armstrong's generous donation and the subsequent creation of the Old Chapel have left a lasting legacy within the Methodist community, serving as a cornerstone of our church's history and faith.  

The Early Years

Armstrong Chapel had its beginnings in the first Methodist "classes" held on farms in and around Milford in 1798. The inspiration and leader of these first religious meetings was Francis McCormick. The tide of immigration was flowing with increasing speed and it is a tribute to the ability, energy and zeal of Rev. McCormick, that he was able to organize classes of his fellow Methodists so early around 1797. These first efforts from the Church in Milford extended to the settlers on Indian Hill in 1798. Early in 1798, with the arrival of Rev. Philip Gatch, the group made up of Grace Garlan, Grecy Garlan, and Jacob Teal formed the young Society, now having two preachers and was well-positioned for missionary work in the outlying districts near Milford and the homes on Indian Hill.

The settlers of the Miami country as far north as Dayton came into the Territory by way of Columbia, then up the Miami River, making their first overnight stop at Milford, where in true pioneer hospitality, they were sheltered. In response to a request for aid in organization, Kentucky Conference sent Rev. John Kobler as a missionary to Ohio and is one of the landmarks in the history of this congregation. In August, 1798, Rev. Kobler traveled up the Little Miami to Mad River (now Dayton) then down the Big Miami to the Ohio River, forming the Miami Circuit. For the next 60 years our area was served by circuit riders. Because of the extent of the territory, the itinerant minister only came occasionally, every six weeks or so. During the intervals, services were conducted by a "local preacher." He labored six days as other men did and then preached on Sunday. His task was easy compared with the task of the circuit rider. Regardless of weather, food, lodging and shelter, half of his time was spent in the saddle, incessantly riding, preaching and ministering to his flocks. Without him, the pioneer church might have failed.

The Arrival of the Armstrongs

They put the lush green valleys of Virginia and Pennsylvania behind them as, toward the turn of the 19th century, they set out for the Ohio country, to a new world and a new beginning. They drove their wagons across the roots and ruts of wilderness traces, waited out flooded rivers, built flatboats to float themselves, their livestock and all their worldly goods down the broad Ohio River to where the Little Miami joined it at Columbia landing.

They are gone now. But they have left behind them one of Ohio’s loveliest landmarks and most serene sanctuaries -- Old Armstrong Chapel. A small Methodist meeting house, it is an enduring testament to man’s faith and endurance. Brick by home-fired brick, timber by hand-pegged timber, the same pioneers who cleared the wilderness reared this little church in the wildwood. 

"We remained a few days," Leonard Armstrong recalled "then set out for a six week journey ... When we came to the Gauley River ... It was so high that we could not cross it for several days, and what was more, we had neither flour nor meal, and were obliged to buy corn at one dollar per bushel and pound it in a mortar for something to eat.

 
"On the 22nd of June, 1800, they anchored at Columbia [settled 1788] near Cincinnati [settled 1789], and by this time our horses had arrived. A gentleman took us to a small cabin; we moved our women folks in and found that to be all the cabin would hold. We boys wheeled our wagons in front and lived in them until our house was built. Brother John then took us to the spot where he had stuck his stake (where a man named Bearsley was operating a mill), and we tried to buy Mr. Bearsley out but he refused to sell, so we paid Judge Goforth twelve hundred dollars for the site of what is known as the Upper Mill (at Milford) with one hundred acres of land and began to build a house.

"Some began to cut timber, others to saw logs and some began to clear a place for the house. We took our logs to the Round Bottom Mill and got plank for inclosing and flooring it, in which we moved on the 22nd of July, just one month from the day we landed at Columbia. We next commenced to build a dam across the river, that required three years of hard labor."

So the Armstrongs began building what would eventually be three grist and lumber mills that they ran, for many years, between Milford and Newtown.

There they also began attending the Methodist "classes" that had been gathered in 1798 by the small band of settlers who had preceded them to the Little Miami. These worshipers met in one pioneer’s log cabin or another’s, to hear the word of God from Francis McCormick, the young ex-soldier who had seen Cornwallis’ surrender, who was "wild and wicked and of ungovernable temper" until he had been converted to Methodism at age 26. Then he had preached in both Virginia and Kentucky before settling with his young family, in the autumn of 1797, on the east bank of the Little Miami, a mile above the present Milford. There he organized the first Methodist society in this region.

Philip Gatch’s Role

Early services were held in the log cabin of Philip Gatch, who, like Francis McCormick, had been a Methodist "circuit rider" all over the East, going on horseback from rural hamlet to hamlet, organizing Methodist classes (10 or more neighbors) to sing and pray together.  That movement was not originally a church, but an effort by young, zealous members of the "established" Anglican Church -- to stir a greater sense of Christian arousal and personal devotion among the established Church’s parishioners. These circuit-riding "exhorters" like Gatch and McCormick were not "ministers," did not baptize, consecrate marriages, give communion or perform any other priestly function. The classes they organized in various neighborhoods met only on weekdays, attending their own Anglican churches on Sundays. Often, however, the members experienced a sense of deeper conversion from hearing these circuit-riding exhorters, whose message was simply John Wesley’s own: Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, At all the times you can, As long as ever you can.

It was not until 1784 that Gatch, Asbury and other leading Methodists finally cut their Anglican ties, formed the Methodist Church, and began ordaining Gatch and others to perform all the priestly functions. They followed a Sunday service prepared by Wesley abbreviated from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and adopted 25 Articles of Religion abbreviated from the 39 Articles of the Anglican Creed. They chose Asbury as their first "Superintendent," or as the title soon became, Bishop. Asbury was one of those who called on President Washington, after his inauguration in New York, to pledge loyalty to the new Republic and thus lay to rest all surviving suspicions of Methodism’s English origins.

Nathaniel Armstrong’s Family Grows

Nathaniel Armstrong and his sons needed all the Christian fortitude and patience that they could muster. Many were the ordeals and disasters they had to undergo before they could scratch out a dependable living. The brief story left us by Nathaniel’s son, Leonard, tells what it was like.

Despite the three years’ work on the first milldam, built of cribs made of poles and planking, then filled with stone, "a freshet came and swept away everything except the stone. This taught us that stone would stick, while timber would swim. Then we began hauling stone to build our dam again, filling it in as we went and succeeded in making it permanent."

Then they built a sawmill, "sawed some time, doing a good business, when lo! another freshet -- and away went the mill gliding down the river, and as the neighbors said, ‘sawing as it went.’ We boys stood with our hands in our pockets viewing the grand spectacle with no power to prevent it, yet while it was still in sight, we began another. We went to the house and told father, and his answer was ‘Well, boys, I’m glad you take it so easy.’ In a short time, we had both a grist and sawmill running for father."

The boys then began mills of their own. William and John bought out Mr. Bearsley (who had the mill that John had first coveted, near Newtown) "tore away the shanty and built" a house. Between this "Lower Mill" and Armstrong’s Upper Mill, Leonard and Thomas bought 60 acres around the island where the East Forks join the Little Miami. Here, after other freshets and disasters, they put in a third mill which not only ground grist but "pulled" and carded cotton with the primitive machinery then in existence.

 By 1830, Nathaniel Armstrong’s prolific family all had their own farms, mills and enterprises throughout the Milford-Newtown area, and Nathaniel himself, at 81, was living out his sunset years on a 300-acre farm in the Drake Road area. His wife, Hannah Norris Armstrong, had died in 1827, at the age of 84, and was buried in the family plot atop the hill. More settlers had come to the surrounding area, enough so that the little church in Milford may have become a bit crowded. Enough now lived there to hold their own services in Armstrong’s home, preached to by circuit riders and by Philip Gatch.

The Building of Armstrong Chapel

Nathaniel Armstrong began to contemplate a second Meeting House on his own property, beside where Hannah was buried. He may have felt some sentimental significance in the fact that June 22, 1830 would mark the 30th year of his family’s arrival at the Columbia landing. In any case, it was just four days before that anniversary, on June 18, 1830, that he went before Ralid Evans, a Justice of the Peace in Hamilton County, and set his "hand and seal" upon a deed of "one acre and twenty-seven poles strict measure" of his land to provide a burying ground" and a "meeting house or other place of worship for the use of the Ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America."

He deeded it to his son-in-law, Samuel Earhart, to William Flinn, David Hobby, and his own son, James, as trustees and "their successors in office forever" on condition that the new meeting house be used "according to the rules and discipline of the said church for the time being and in further trust and confidence that they shall at all times forever, hereafter, permit the ministers and preachers of said church to preach and expound God’s holy word therein agreeably to the order, rules and regulations of the conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church."

The deed was not recorded until the following July, 1831, by which time, Armstrong Chapel was almost finished.

The clay for its bricks was dug from the farm of Samuel Earhart, and baked in a kiln there behind the old frame house that now stands at the northwest corner of Drake and Varner. The timber for it was sawn at the Armstrong family’s Lower Mill near Newtown. The foundation was made of stones from the nearby fields.

Very few records have come down, through all those decades in between, to tell us of those who worshiped there. Since Philip Gatch lived on in good health until the very day of his death on Christmas, 1834, it may be assumed that he often preached there, as did the other Methodist "trail blazers" riding the "circuit" that then extended up the Little Miami to Xenia, thence down to Dayton and the Big Miami’s successive hamlets down to the Ohio River.

It was James Laws who solemnized the wedding of Annie Earhart, granddaughter of trustee Samuel Earhart, to Joseph B. Mann on July 22, 1831, while the Chapel was still being completed. It was believed to be the first wedding there. Three years later, August 14, 1834, The Rev. Aaron Birdsell saw Lot Losh married to Alasana Earhart, who was evidently named for Nathaniel Armstrong’s own daughter of that name.

Samuel Earhart himself married Nathaniel’s youngest daughter, Priscilla. His family Bible still exists, and records:

Samuel Earhart & Priscilla Armstrong were married on November 29th, 1810, by the Rev. Philip Gatch

One of the few surviving records of Armstrong Chapel’s activities to come down through all those intervening decades is the Sunday School Minute Book, printed by the American Sunday School Union of Philadelphia, whose flyleaf bears this handwritten inscription, "Armstrong Chapel Sunday May 8th 1859."

By then, "instrumental music" had been added to "prayer & singing." A torn page in the back attempted to tabulate "number of verses recited" by both male and female scholars, but all that can now be read concerns the performances of "Miss Caroline Norris" such as 113 verses on one Sunday. This book covers the whole period of the Civil War, but one finds no clue within it as to how that great catastrophe affected individual lives at Armstrong. On Sunday, July 5, 1863, the day after Pickett’s charge failed at Gettysburg, and the tide of the Confederacy was turned forever, only this is noted: "Weather tolerable fine. Very slim turnout. Good order restored. W. S. Flinn, asst. Sec." Only 18 boys and 13 girls were present that Sunday for the six teachers, four of them men.

The Descendants of Nathaniel Armstrong & Other Original Families

Continuity of Armstrong Chapel’s many decades is preserved by the fact that descendants of several of the original families live in and around Indian Hill. Not far from the chapel itself lives George Losh, who grandfather’s name is in that old Sunday School Record. In Madisonville is John Earhart, great-grandson of that Samuel Earhart who married Nathaniel Armstrong’s daughter, Priscilla. Now 81, he and his wife have the Bible that records that 1810 wedding. What is now Brill Road was once mostly their large farm and was then Earhart Road. Mrs. Earhart, who was Hannah Norris, is related to the Caroline Norris who recited so many verses in the 1860's.

Several direct descendants of Nathaniel Armstrong live on in Milford. John Armstrong, the who first came west and persuaded the others to follow, married Sara Norris. They had a son named Marshall, who had a daughter named Anna. She married Eugene Shumard, a brilliant automotive engineer (he designed the Army truck used in World War I and built in Covington.) His sons, Donovan and Allan Shumard, for many years ran the Milford hardware store at 780 Main St. and later moved it to a new location in Milford. They are great-great-grandsons of Nathaniel. Their sisters, the Misses Dulce and Lucille Shumard, live on Mound Street, not far from the site of Nathaniel’s "Upper Mill."

Over the decades, the descendants of Nathaniel Armstrong have scattered, like all Americans, across the broad sweep of America. Some, however, are still here. Eunice Armstrong Williamson, deceased, is a great-great-granddaughter. For many years she raised her four children (Francis, Charles, Mary, and Howard) in a house standing before the water tower and then in a house next door to her mother on Miami Road. Francis, a foreman at Allis Chalmers retired, as a boy went to the small schoolhouse across from the chapel when it was a one-room school. Francis' daughter Barbara Williamson Margaritis, currently a member of Armstrong Chapel, attended Sunday school as a child in the same building. Another son, Howard Williamson, is the grandfather of Joy Helton, who currently works in the Armstrong Chapel office. Turpin Armstrong, the father of Eunice Williamson, had a farmhouse near the Little Miami at Varner Road and, until his death in the mid-1930s, farmed some 100 acres in the bottom-land below the bluff in Mariemont.

Frances Williamson Heintz, whose husband, Victor Heintz, was a congressman and a WWI hero who founded the Cincinnatus Association and its reform movement, was also a great-great-granddaughter of Nathaniel, and the granddaughter of Margaret Maria Earhart, one of many daughters of Priscilla and Samuel Earhart. Her daughter, Mary Ellen Heintz, recalls: "My mother sang and played the organ at Old Armstrong. I was baptized there. My mother and father are buried there."

Miss Amy Scott, whose family inter-married with the Armstrongs, is another living great-great-granddaughter of Nathaniel. The Scotts and Armstrongs took over and jointly ran the Kugler Mill in Milford, built by the settler, Kugler, who built the old stone bridge across the Little Miami at Milford, as well as all the distinctive old stone buildings along Main Street. Their last mill was destroyed about 1920.

Old Armstrong’s burying ground has the grave of William Finch who, as a Revolutionary War veteran, came to Cincinnati in his later years to join his son, Lewis. William’s grandson, Frank Finch, a Johnny Appleseed of his day, planted all the trees around Old Armstrong, including the corner dogwood, some 80 years ago. He once wrote on the back of the photo, "The most beautiful monument we can leave are the trees, flowers and fruits planted where those coming after us may enjoy them." The photo became the possession of great-great-granddaughter, Mary Finch, who long sang in Armstrong’s choir. She married Melvin Armbrecht. Six generations of the Finch family have been associated with the church and are now buried in the Old Chapel Cemetery .

There are two other fascinating continuities. One of Philip Gatch’s great-great-nephews, Louise Gatch, a young attorney, lives just across Drake Road from the new Armstrong Chapel. An in Walnut Hills lives Mary, the daughter of Dr. Arthur Levi Knight, who until his death in 1936 was the best-known doctor in this area. In the 1880s, he was superintendent of Armstrong Chapel’s Sunday School. Mary Knight, herself a doctor, married Eslie Asbury, one of the best-known surgeons in Cincinnati and Kentucky. Dr. Asbury is the great-great-great-nephew of Methodism’s first Bishop Asbury, who so often came to that "first class" of the Little Miami from which the Old and New Armstrong Chapel congregations derive.

In 1975, as Armstrong Chapel marked its 177th year in a time of world crisis and an erosion of faith in the nation’s own integrity, a guidepost of strength, serenity and fortitude is offered by Leonard Armstrong as he closed his own chronicle in his 93rd year. "Ten years of my life here, among my children, have been the happiest I have ever spent... As we, who have, for nearly three score years, shared every joy and every sorrow, feeling the dark lining of Death’s shadowy mantle draw closer and closer around us, we calmly wait our summons hence, knowing not which will be the first to go, but, be as it may, we feel that all will be well."

Oldest archive

Sunday School Minute Book

The preservation of the Sunday School Minute Book from the Old Chapel provides a valuable insight into the early activities of the community. By meticulously recording attendance and details of activities, this historical document offers a glimpse into the past. It's noteworthy that descendants of the individuals documented in this Minute Book continue to have a presence in the Indian Hill area today, highlighting the enduring legacy of those who contributed to the foundation of the community. This connection between the past and present serves as a testament to the rich history and sense of continuity in the region.