Church historian Marj McClurg has compiled the 150-year history of the Meriden United Methodist Church as it holds its sesquicentennial celebration Sunday.
by Clarke Davis
The Meriden United Methodist Church will be celebrating its 150th anniversary Sunday.
The congregation will play host to former members who have moved away as well as ministers who have served the church.
The worship service is at 10 a.m. followed by hospitality time with special guests and a buffet luncheon at 11:30.
The church and grounds will be open for tours and activities from 1 to 3 p.m. a bouncy house and games will entertain the children.
Marj McClurg was appointed to be the church historian a couple of years ago and has compiled five large volumes of information about the church over the decades.
She and her late husband, Jerry, were married in the church Jan. 30, 1960. It was a year the older folks will remember well, she said.
Within a month of their wedding the community received over 47 inches of snow, a devastating hardship particularly on farmers and livestock. And then in May a tornado destroyed the church.
Susan Welborn, a lifelong member, lived within view of the church and it was the first thing she saw after the twister left Meriden.
“We didn’t have a basement to go to, but when it was over I looked out and said, ‘It hit the church!,’ ” she said.
The bell had fallen from the belfry down the basement stairs and that is where it stayed until 1985 when the congregation built a structure to house the bell in front of the church.
Marj lived most of her life three miles west of Meriden and attended a one-room school across the Shawnee County line. She started high school in Meriden and is a member of the class of 1959.
She was a member of the Pleasant Hill Methodist Church, Topeka, until she started high school and then began attending church in Meriden.
Jerry was employed by DuPont and Marj was an administrative secretary to five therapists at the former Menninger Clinics in Topeka.
The McClurgs lived between Meriden and Valley Falls. “I had just cooked supper when the tornado went through. We left and headed to check on family and see what needed to be done,” she said. “We got home at 4 a.m. and our supper was still there waiting for us.”
Susan’s connection to the church is lifelong. Her grandfather Mangold came to Kansas in 1902 and she is the third generation to be a part of the church family. Her father was a farmer, but a heart attack caused him to change occupations and he purchased the hardware store in Meriden, the place where Susan has a flower shop today.
Marj and Jerry raised two children, Mike and Michele Carter. She has five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Susan has two children, Danise and Todd and two granddaughters. She went to the one-room Dix school.
“I was the only one in my class all through grade school and I was the last one to graduate from eighth grade before it closed,” she said.
Susan attended Meriden High School, graduating in 1963.
According to McClurg’s history, an elected board of trustees organized the Meriden Episcopal Church in 1873 and dedicated a new building in 1877 at Main and Dawson.
Lightning shattered the 84-foot spire in 1880 and that was repaired and replaced with a much shorter one. “No use inviting trouble,” it was said at the time.
The church was replaced with a new building in 1922 after the congregation outgrew it, but it would burn on a cold Sunday in January 1949. The cornerstone for a new church was laid in July 1950 and it was this one that was struck by a tornado May 19, 1960.
Again, the congregation built another church on the same site and dedicated it in 1961.
In 1968, the Evangelical United Brethren denomination and the Methodist denomination united to form the United Methodist Church. The same year Meriden’s Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church united to form the Meriden United Methodist Church.
Other major projects have included building a new parsonage in 1971 and breaking ground in 2005 for a large living center and gym addition to the church.
Sixty-seven pastors and a couple of traveling pastors have served the church in its 150 years. The current pastor, the Rev. Gina Tyler, has been with the church since 2020 and will soon leave to be followed by the Rev. Troy Bowers, Columbia, Mo.
The church is serving approximately 260 families.