![]() | East Lemon United Methodist Churchon Avery Station Road, just off of Pa. Rt. 92 about 6 miles northeast of Tunkhannock, Pa. | ![]() |
Historic Church BuildingThis East Lemon Methodist Church building was constructed in 1870 and 1871 by Archibald Bannatyne, a native of Scotland, in the style of a New England town hall. It cost $3,000 to build, and the monies came from pledges of members of the Stark Methodist Episcopal Church which was just a mile and a half away as well as townsfolk who felt the emerging village of East Lemon needed its own church. At the time it was dedicated on October 20, 1871, its dimensions (of 34 feet wide, 56 feet long and 26 feet tall) made it the largest church building in Wyoming County.A large double door in the front center of the structure invites people to come in. Separate stairs for men and women led to the upper room which is the sanctuary, but the segregated entrances have been combined to make one wide flight of stairs. Otherwise, the main hall of the church remains as it was designed, flooded with natural light from large windows and rich in the simplicity of wainscoting and plaster walls. Long wooden pews line both sides of a main aisle leading to a central pulpit from which many a baptism, marriage and funeral service has been performed and communion taken. Singing schools were also conducted here from the 1870s through the first decade of the 1900s, and many a temperance worker also preached to the mostly converted about the evils of alcohol abuse from the church's beginning in 1871 up to the 1930s. Anyone who utilized a pillow on the seat of the family buckboard which brought them to church would have made the hard pew more comfortable. The last of the old horsesheds out back were removed in 1931, but if you listen closely enough, you're likely to hear the birds still singing in the trees outside the church windows.
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