According to a brief history of Mt. Zion compiled by Mrs. Erva Davis, it is believed Methodist services were held in the neighborhood of Laurel Grove by 1833. A meeting house was begun in Laurel Grove in approximately 1840 with a two year discontinuance of work before completion.
A detailed history of Mt. Zion, based on tradition, was written by John Wesley Graves II in 1897. He alleged that regular preaching services were established in 1802 at the home of John E. Harding, which was just a few hundred yards from where the church stood in 1897; which is the old section of the present cemetery.
John Harding was a member of the Red Church, an Episcopal chapel approximately 2 miles from his home. Benjamin Tippett, a Methodist minister, conducted services at the same Episcopal church as well as at Harding's home.
Summer services were held on Harding's land under a "brush arbor" set up for that purpose near the road. Mr. Graves credited Benjamin Tippett with establishing the then present church and John E. Harding with donating the land.
It is unclear whether Mr. Graves meant that the 1802 services were Methodist or Episcopalian, but whichever he meant, his dates are questionable as John E. Harding was a small child in 1802, and his father acquired his land in laurel Grove after 1807.
At the request of the Quarterly Conference of the Charles and St. Mary's Circuit, James Harding and his wife had a deed executed in 1872, which gave the church clear title to the land on which it stood. This deed establishes the credibility of the original donation of land to the Harding family. However, the question remains as to why there was no earlier deed.
Benjamin Tippett was a well-known local minister. He may have been in the Episcopalian Church because it was the only established Protestant church in the county when he moved to St. Mary's from Virginia in the very early 1800s.
Rev. Tippett conducted Methodist services in the Chaptico area and helped establish Ebenezer Methodist Church in 1820. He preached the first sermon in the Methodist Meeting House in Leonardtown in 1828 and was a member of the Board of Trustees for Bethesda in 1830. Rev. Tippett died in 1836. So if he helped establish Mt. Zion as well, the church was established prior to that date.