Overlooking Lake Morton
by Laurie Perry
Title
Overlooking Lake Morton
Artist
Laurie Perry
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
First United Methodist Church in Lakeland, Florida. In 1884, the city of Lakeland was in the thrust of its infancy with homes being built, businesses beginning, land being tilled for groves, vegetation and the like, phosphate being unearthed and families beginning to move in.
As was the case across America during the settlement of this country, the need for the church was evident. Thus in 1884, the Methodist Episcopal Church South of Lakeland was born when a group of about 15 people saw this need and gathered in a schoolhouse known as the Academy. This location was on the northwest corner of South Tennessee Avenue and East Lime Street. Leading this organization congregation was William T. Taylor, who was a local Methodist minister serving as supply pastor of the Medulla Mission, south of Lakeland. Services continued to take place in the schoolhouse for about a year, at which time the congregation moved to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church located north of the school on Tennessee Avenue. The leadership of the Presbyterian Church was generous in sharing their building with the Methodist congregation until a permanent place of worship could be built. Also during those first few years, groups within the organization of the church met in homes and in the upper story of a building on Tennessee Avenue known as the Riggins-Wagner building.
Not until 1885 did the church become an official appointment in the Annual Methodist Conference minutes, and T. J. Phillips was assigned as its pastor.
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January 8th, 2014
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