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Our Sunday Worship Service is held at Please join us. |
The history of the
Town of The second Methodist
presence came a decade later. In Port Ewen, a small group of worshippers
formed a congregation in 1855. Initially the pastor of the Esopus Methodist
church made weekly trips to Port Ewen to hold services. A small building was
put up in 1856 and was later replaced by a larger structure on the current
site. A third Methodist church in
the parish was established in Rifton in 1864. This church was initially
independent of the other two churches, being supported by a relatively large
population brought to Rifton by local mills, but as the mills closed, new
demographics forged a closer relationship with Port Ewen and Esopus. Through the years, connections
between these churches varied. At times they were yoked together in various
combinations and at other times, they had independent pastors. However, from
1923 and until 1994 they were a three-point charge served by one pastor. Two significant events have
occurred in the last twenty-five years. The first is that the church in Port
Ewen was destroyed by arsonists in 1976. The damage was so bad that even the
bell came loose from the belfry and broke when it hit the ground.
Ground-breaking for the present church occurred in 1978 and a new, larger
church was rebuilt on the same site. The building was completed quickly, but
funds ran out before the steeple could be added. A second major event
happened in 1994 when the three-point charge was reincorporated in merged
form as the Town of Esopus United Methodist Church–a single-point charge consisting of the
membership of all three churches, meeting solely at the rebuilt church
facility in Port Ewen. The church buildings in Esopus and Rifton were closed
and have since been sold. In 1998, the building in
Port Ewen was completed with the addition of a 50-foot steeple and an
elevator system that provides full handicap accessibility to all three floors
of the main building. |
Town of Esopus United Methodist
Church | West Main & Green Street, Port Ewen, NY 12466 | 845-338-0356 | toeumc@yahoo.com