A Tale of Two Churches

In this episode of Montgomery Memories, hosts Tracey Henao and Kevin Chesar explore the history of two significant local landmarks: the Hopewell–Montgomery Presbyterian Church and the Universalist Church. The episode traces their shared beginnings in the early 1800s, when settlers established Hopewell as a central place of worship and community life. Over time, theological differences led to a division, with some members forming the Universalist Church to embrace more progressive beliefs.

Despite this split, both churches played important roles in shaping Montgomery’s social and cultural development. Through stories of their construction, unique features, and preservation, the episode highlights how these buildings reflect both differing perspectives and a shared community identity—showing how faith, change, and cooperation helped shape the Montgomery we know today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Montgomery Memories, where we explore the stories, people, and places that shaped our community. I'm Kevin Chezar.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

And I'm Tracy Annell. Today we're bringing you something a little special, what we're calling the Tale of Two Churches. We're looking at two of Montgomery's most important historic landmarks, the Hopewell Montgomery Presbyterian Church and the Universalist Church.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And Tracy, both of these buildings are keystones in the historic Montgomery, and they tell a deeper story about faith, growth, division, and ultimately community identity.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

That's right, Kevin. Let's start at the beginning. When Montgomery was settled in 1795 by families from Montgomery, New York, they brought their faith, which was Dutch Reformed with them. Now, out here in the wild, wild west Ohio, they did not have Dutch Reform, but Presbyterium was pretty close fit. So that is what they decided to practice. So they began meeting informally in a small log structure, not a formal church, just neighbors gathering in shared faith.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

That changed in 1801 when the Reverend James Kemper formally organized the group as the Sycamore Creek Congregation. By 1803, it became Hopewell Presbyterian Church, and it didn't take long for them to build a permanent place of worship near what we now know as Hopewell Cemetery. What else happened in 1803?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Ohio became a state.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

But not officially until 1953 because Congress forgot to ratify our Constitution.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Oopsie.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

But we all recognize 1803. So sorry, that was a squirrel moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, if you guys listened to the our episode on the pioneer section of Hopewell Cemetery, you would have heard us talk about the cemetery as the location for the first church. Unfortunately, this church is no longer there, and there's just an empty spot in the pioneer section where the church would have been, right there at the intersection of Deerfield and Montgomery Road.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And Hopewell wasn't just a church. It was one of the earliest community anchors in Montgomery, where civic life, education, and social gatherings occurred. And as Montgomery grew, so did the congregation. By the early 1800s, they needed more space and eventually they moved downtown into the Academy building. The Academy was one of Montgomery's first school buildings in the village. It was shared, a shared community space where education meetings and even church services took place before permanent churches were built. So where was the Academy building exactly? Tracy, do you know?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, it would have been at the intersection of what today is Remington and Shelley. So I'm not exactly sure which corner it was on, um, but it would have been in that area and kind of a village kind of center or civic center for the village at that time. By 1829, construction began on a permanent home to house the Hopewell Montgomery Church. The church is the white brick church on Shelley Lane. It's gothic revival style with pointed arches, stained glass windows, and a distinctive design really stood out in this small frontier town. The original church was entered from the north side of the building and did not have that front bump out or the steeple, which were added later. Now they were still added in the 1800s, so they're still historic, but they wouldn't have been part of the original church. There was also a large addition to the church added in the 60s, which you can really tell when you're down there because it's more just uh utilitarian with and the windows are not true stained glass.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

So with every tour we give, you always make sure I have my handy-dandy flashlight and I shine it on one specific item of the church. Can you tell us about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, so the one item we always point out at the church is uh in the stained glass window on the front of the church, there is a blue anchor. And the blue anchor is in commemoration of James Ayres. Uh now he was a shipbuilder and he owned the James Ayres House, fittingly, which is on Montgomery Road. It's the blue house that houses automated systems engineering today. And then the back is Walker Brothers ice cream. So you may be a little more familiar with that business. Um, but he was a shipbuilder by trade, and his father and his grandfather before him were shipbuilders. Um, a lot of people look at me like I have two heads when I tell them we had shipbuilders in Montgomery, but we were a day's worth of travel to the ports at Cincinnati, and so they would build pieces for ships and then they would send them down to Cincinnati. Uh, so it was a pretty, pretty common thing to build things for the ships and for the trade that was happening down in Cincinnati. Now, James was also a founding father of the Hopewell Montgomery Presbyterian Church, and so that blue anchor was put into the window to commemorate and honor him.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Okay, so here's the next part of the story that kind of takes an interesting turn. Uh, not everyone in the Hopewell congregation shared the same views, especially when it came to theology. And around the 1820s, some members began to move away from what we described as the fire and brimstone teachings or view of the church and towards a more inclusive belief system. What can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, so that new belief system in the village was called Universalism. And that idea was that all people would ultimately be saved. And for the time, it was a pretty radical shift uh amongst the villagers, and it was referred to in the in the history book as the Great Divide. In 1835, the group officially had formed the Universalist Society and purchased land right in the heart of town, which is at the intersection of Montgomery Road and Remington. And then just two years later, in 1837, they constructed the Universalist Church.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

And that church was much like the original church, it was constructed by the community members itself. It was made from brick on site and it was sun-dried using clay from the nearby land. Um, one of the really cool things about church is there are a hundred key imprints in the bricks on the church. This is still the same key that we use today to open the building. And there's one key on the back that doesn't match anything. So I'm gonna go a little off script here. And I'm not a theologian, so I'd love anyone out there with uh universalistic or universalism background, maybe to reach out to us. But think about this 100 keys. So I was just trying to do a little bit of research. 100% salvation is what they believed in. So in a universalist belief, salvation isn't partial, it's complete. So that hundred could be no, this is all just theory, um, represent that ideology of ideology, excuse me, of everyone, every soul ultimately belongs. And the one different key could be so you have one different key, 99 similar keys. It could be individuality within unity of the universalist church. Now, I have no theory that beyond some brief research that talk about universalistic beliefs, but that's something that could be added to it.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, I mean, I think it could be a valid theory. It's it's has as much validity as the theory that I've heard that maybe it was the key to the outhouse. Right. Right. So I mean that has much more deep meaning than that. So I'm gonna I think that uh, you know, that might that might be that's a much deeper conversation, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

But I was just trying to look at what's the what what does 100 signif signify in universalism and 100% salvation?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

So I like it. I like it. Um, and you know, they're not here to tell us, so we can we can go with that, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

I think one other thing to point out about the bricks is for currently what there's a project that you are under you're in charge of and undertaking with uh a construction person, a brick specialty brick person. What are they doing down there now?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yeah, so that's one of the interesting things about the church as well, is so if you look at it from the front, they have these beautiful columns on the front of the church that are tapered towards the top, which is kind of a unique design. Um, and they would have made all of those cuts to the brick right there on site. And then, of course, that would leave remnants of all of these bricks. Um, and so that is what they use to make that brick entryway um that's there in front of the church right now. And so that's been there since 1837. And as you can imagine, those bricks have taken a beating over the years with salts and just people, the weather and people walking on them. And so we've had some that are really crumbling and falling apart, uh, and we needed to do kind of a renovation project there. So we are currently working with a contractor on that work, and he is really passionate about historic preservation, which is great. So he was able to find a building in downtown Cincinnati that was being demolished that has brick of similar age, and he was able to salvage that brick, and then he's making all the cuts to replicate the cuts that were on the entryway and redoing that whole thing. So it's going to be, you know, as close to the original as we can possibly get. Um, and we're salvaging all the bricks that can be salvaged. So that's all the work you see happening down there at the church right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Okay, and so tell us one other little interesting tidbit that I messed up, I think, in our original episode about the bell.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

You sure did. So I wanted to make sure that we clarify. Um, you thought that the uh we mentioned that there were coins that were added to the bell so that it could help with the ringing of the bell and make it a very clear sound. And you thought maybe they just strung them on a string inside the bell.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

I did. I got a little confused by that.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

They did not, they uh melted those down. Um, but the idea behind that is the the coins melted down into the metal for the bell create a clearer and richer tone that could be heard all the way throughout the village. Pause.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Just let's stop it because I didn't realize I had to I was trying to get you back on track of the coins.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

One other interesting thing about the Universalists um that we talk about on the tour, and is that they were more progressive, right, than the Presbyterians that were in the church on Shelley Lane. But they still had two doors, one entrance for women and one for men. So they still believed that they needed to enter into separate doors and they needed to worship on separate sides of the church. And so a lot of people ask me why the other church doesn't have two doors. Um, but if you it actually did, it's just hard to see that now because it has all been bricked in. So if you're on Shelley Lane and you go to the north side of the church, there's a stained glass window on that side, and on either side of that, you can see faintly, but you can see where the entrances to both of those doors were. They've been re-bricked and then obviously painted in white, so it's hard to see that. But that would have been the original entrance for the door.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Okay, and so there's another story that's one of my favorites, but I don't know how grounded in truth it really is, but it is a good story that supposedly uh a cyclone split the building in half on a universalist church in the 1880s, and a local blacksmith used beans and a block and tackle system to pull it back together so perfectly that you can't even see the scene where it's split today.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah, that's that story is in the history book. Um I I tend to believe that it's true, but it's uh it's hard to think of today that they would have been able to split it in half and then pull it together. Yeah, it's hard to imagine, but um that's that's the story, and we're sticking to it. Um but so the Universalist Church was was really important in the community and became a place of worship, um, but it also served as kind of a central gathering place for the town. Um, and the bell became a really important thing in the village. Uh, it served not only to signify services and marriages and things like that, but also to serve as a signal to the fire brigade that you need to come out and help uh because there's an issue going on. So obviously, most of these buildings in the village were two-story wood frame buildings, and we didn't have a fire department, we didn't have a quint, we didn't have all of the fancy tools that we have today. So people would literally sleep with buckets of water by their front door. And when they heard the bell, they knew, hey, we got to get outside and we got to help. Um, it also would have been used to summon the Hamilton County militia at the time and those that were part of that. So it was a very important building, not only for services and for church, but just as an essential part of everyday life.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

And I think what's fascinating is that these two churches existed almost side by side next to each other, and but they represented different religious and theological views, but they were still serving the growing Montgomery community. And I think it just really reflects something deeper that even we see in Montgomery today that early on back then there was space here for differing perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think the key to that is to remember how small the village was at this time. We're talking 500 people, so it's not as though, you know, it's like today where there's almost 12,000 of us and having different belief systems, but um just 500. Um, and as we know, I think faith was a little bit more central to everyday life even back then. Um but you know, as these as these churches experienced change and the congregation shifted, the population of Montgomery grew and needs evolved. The Universalist Church, in particular, uh, stopped holding regular services by the end of the 20th century. Now, at one point, it was actually very close to being demolished for the construction of a gas station. Fortunately for us, former mayor Tom Brennan's and his wife Edith stepped in and purchased the property to save it from demolition. And that effort helped lead to the church and three other buildings on Montgomery Road, which include the Crane Conklin, the Pioneer Building, and then the former Presbyterian man's, all being listed on the National Register for a Historic Place, which is pretty cool. So that was dead in 1970, and it was one of the earliest national historic places, and it's still one of the smallest in Hamilton County.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Today, both churches represent differing chapters of Montgomery's story. The congregations from the original Hopewell Montgomery Presbyterian Church still operates in town here, uh, and they're known as the Evergreen Presbyterian Church. And the Universalist Church stands as a preserved landmark, a reminder of both faith and the community's commitment to protecting its past.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, that's right, Kevin. And when you step back, it really is a tale of two churches, but just one shared story about how a small group of settlers brought their beliefs, adapted over time, and built something lasting together. And how, even though we have differences, those early settlers helped shape the community that we know today.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Well, thank you for joining us for this episode of Montgomery Memories, a tale of two churches. We'll see you next time as we continue uncovering the stories that make Montgomery Montgomery. Thank you.