Wyandot Mission Church: The First Western Methodist Mission
Ohio
The small stone church you are passing near Upper Sandusky is the oldest church structure of its kind west of the Allegheny Mountains. It grew out of an extraordinary story: in eighteen sixteen, a free Black man from Virginia named John Stewart walked into the Wyandot council house and began preaching. He had no church backing, no salary, nothing but conviction.
By eighteen nineteen, the Methodist Episcopal Church recognized his work as its first official western mission. In eighteen twenty-four, the War Department contributed thirteen hundred and thirty-three dollars to build this stone church. Stewart did not live to see it.
He died in eighteen twenty-three at thirty-seven. The Wyandot people used the church until eighteen forty-three, when they were removed to Kansas, and they formally deeded the building to the Methodist Church on their way out.
