Lewiston's First Church: Lumber Camp to Congregation

Lewiston, Michigan, grew up fast in eighteen ninety-one and eighteen ninety-two around the Michelson and Hanson Lumber Company. In those early months, before there was a proper building or a settled congregation, two men, Doctor U. H.

Traver and George Tuxworth, held the first religious meetings right inside the lumber camp itself. Word reached the Congregational Conference of Michigan, and they dispatched the Reverend A. M.

Hills to organize something permanent. The congregation he gathered became the Congregational United Church of Christ still standing here today. It is a reminder that in Michigan's cutover north, the church and the mill arrived together, and the faith communities that formed in those rough-hewn camps often outlasted the timber economy that built them.