What’s in a name? When US Rt. 19 heads south out of Waynesburg it becomes Mt. Morris Road as it meanders towards that old frontier town on the state line. The first steep slope Mt. Morris Road climbs in Franklin Township is called Gordon Hill, a shout out to the Gordons who left Scotland to farm these fertile hills and valleys in the late 1700s. At the Franklin Township side of Gordon Hill is Laurel Run, where a school that doubled as a church was built in 1832 as an “appointment on the original Monongahela Circuit of the Reformers” that believed education and spiritual contemplation could share the same space. For the next 40 years, families from neighboring farms gathered on Laurel Run to pray, heed the reformist Protestant Methodist message of John Wesley (1703-1791) and sing the many hymns his brother James was inspired to compose.
With churches a scarcity in rural America of the 1800s, neighbors of differing faiths often worshiped together. By 1872, families in and around Whiteley Township had outgrown their schoolhouse church and were ready to build something closer to Heaven on the ridge above Laurel Run.
Mrs. Edward Wood and her family deeded land at the crest of the hill because “Having four boys she wanted them in church, so she joined herself, but being a Quaker she didn’t believe in music.”
For the music loving Methodists this wasn’t a deal breaker. They put their talents and purse strings to work and within the year the foundation was done, Zeke Guthrie had the building framed and a man named Lundy not only laid the brick but made the bricks “on the adjoining ridge of the Bayard Farm.” It was an impressive $3000 project with a God’s country view and four hitching posts by the door but what to name this dream-come-true? Laurel Hill? Bald Hill? Pleasant Hill? Mt. Pleasant?
Mt. Pleasant Methodist Church on a rocky ridge on the way to Mt. Morris won by a country mile.
The first sermon was preached on November 1, 1873; the hat was passed and the remaining debt of $1,061 was tithed that day.
Mrs. Wood’s great grandson Gordon Wood who was a member of the church when it celebrated its centennial in 1973, presented this nicely detailed family history of “Mt Pleasant M P Church” that I’ve been quoting from. Copies of the Centennial program and newspaper clippings that preserved this history through the years are on file in the church records at Cornerstone Genealogical Society in Waynesburg.
When Mrs. Edward Wood was laid to rest in 1888, church history notes that the first church organ was purchased and the congregation commenced to sing once more. Relics of those early days were put on display for the 1973 Centennial – the bench the pastor knelt on, the coal stove, the gas lights with this side note – “free gas was furnished from the Bayard no. 1 well but for six months until it was properly capped, the well made so much noise you could hardly hear the preacher.”
Mt. Pleasant finally got its bell in 1958 thanks to parishioner Ida White Smith and you can see it hanging in the churchyard when you drive by.
Electricity arrived in 1946 and coal was swapped out for electric heat in 1962, making Mt. Pleasant the first church in the county to “use this new heating system.”
In the beginning the pastors would ride horseback from the parsonage at Fordyce to preach every other Sunday at Mt. Pleasant on a circuit that included Spraggs, Greensboro, Taylorstown, Coallick (the church is now a private home at the intersection of Rolling Meadows and Garards Fort roads) and Pleasant Valley Church in Fordyce. Preachers were paid in provisions but by 1908 the yearly salary was $150.
These days, Pastor Phil Yost, who lives above Cumberland Mine on the Warrior Trail near Claughton Chapel, ministers to the last two churches on his circuit – Mt. Pleasant and Pleasant Valley. He was raised on a farm near Fairall Church and felt the calling as a teenager, he tells me when I catch up with him by phone. After graduating CGHS and attending seminary school, his ministry took him to many churches, both old school and progressive congregations growing with the times. Now at age 61, he reflects on his three years as pastor of Mt. Pleasant, which is now part of the United Methodist Washington District that includes Fairall, Spraggs, Carmichaels, Rogersville and Taylorstown, tucked away in the hills near Mt. Morris in Dunkard Township.
“Covid was hard on all of us but we’re still here. Our congregation is small but faithful.” Pastor Phil and his wife look in on those whose health issues keep them home when Sunday services begin at 9 a.m.
With the 150th anniversary coming up in 2023, Pastor Phil is excited about the possibility of having a celebration to honor the dedication and perseverance of those first Methodist Protestants who settled here and never gave up hope that they would someday work together to build their church on a hill. Stay tuned.