Center Star Methodist Church

This is the oldest active Methodist congregation in Lauderdale County. It was organized in June of eighteen eighteen, the very year Florence itself was founded, near the mouth of Bluewater Creek. In those days the gospel reached this country by circuit riders, traveling preachers on horseback, and the new flock became part of the Richland Circuit that ran up into Giles County, Tennessee.

The congregation has worshipped at roughly six different locations over its long life. For decades it carried the name Driskel's Chapel, until around eighteen ninety-three, when it moved a mile east to the community then called Masonville and took the name Center Star. The Alabama Historical Association marked its place in nineteen seventy-four, honoring more than a century and a half of continuous worship.