It’s surreal to compose an obituary for a church. I wasn’t intimately familiar with Wheeling Methodist Episcopal, but I knew the landmark of rural Delaware County had stood for more than a hundred years in northwestern Delaware County. The resilient building endured challenges like surviving a tornado and resisting threats of relocation and demolition, but all that remains today is a pile of brick and timber.
Expansive swampland hindered Washington Township’s early growth. Nevertheless, a community began to coalesce near the Mississinewa River after David Conner established a trading post in 1823. Fourteen years later, William McCormick laid out plans for a town on the site. Initially known as McCormick’s Post Office, the community was called Cranberry and Cranberry Post Office before it was eventually renamed Wheeling1.
Over time, Wheeling grew large enough to host a hotel, two taverns, a sawmill, a smithery, and a schoolhouse. It was also home to a church2. Methodists held their initial gatherings in the area around 1835. For a long time, the congregation worshipped in a wooden schoolhouse at the town’s main crossroads, later the site of the town’s Odd Fellow’s hall. The church built a frame sanctuary in 18713.
There’s some uncertainty about when the brick Wheeling M.E. Church was built. While some claim it was put up in 19074, period sources suggest that the 1871 structure was simply covered in brick and renovated that year5. I talked to a local expert who believed the latter theory6, which means the church in Wheeling stood in a position of prominence for more than a hundred and fifty years!
I never attended a service, but the building was a lodestar in my early twenties when I dated a girl who lived in Eaton. The closest highway was under construction, so the fastest route home in the wee hours was via Eaton-Wheeling Pike. As I navigated the winding road through the night, the church in Wheeling stood as a familiar landmark that signaled I was nearly home.
It’s been more than a decade since frequent drives took me past it, but I’m surprised by how much I cherished Wheeling Chapel. The church was a modest affair, measuring about 26 x 45 feet, with a central window adorned with Gothic tracery and a similar transom. Before my time, its defining feature was a tower that rose directly above its main entrance.
It’s weird to think that thirty-three years represents the entirety of my life but only twenty-two-percent of Wheeling Chapel’s. Old buildings are strong! They have to be in order to stand the test of time, and the church was the picture of fortitude. Case in point: in 1922, northwestern Delaware County was smacked by a tornado. Houses, barns, trees, and telephone lines in its path were damaged, but Wheeling bore the brunt of the destruction.
The town’s old railroad station was catapulted into the sky, its Odd Fellow’s Lodge’s gables were swept away, and the wind tore the roof off the Methodist Episcopal Church and schoolhouse7. Wheeling and its congregation rebuilt, but its residents faced another obstacle nearly fifty years later.
In 1971, they turned out in droves to reject a proposal to transform the northern part of the village into a 415-acre park named Wheeling Reserve8. The proposal involved creating attractions like a fake grist mill, a phony general store, a fabricated tavern, and a fictitious Native American encampment! Unfortunately, implementing the park would likely have required the relocation or demolition of Wheeling’s genuine historic buildings, including the church.
A year after the plan failed, Wheeling M.E. rechristened itself as Wheeling Community Chapel10. Evidently, the arrangement didn’t last long: eight years later, veteran Muncie newspaperman Dick Greene wrote that “the structure is another landmark worth saving11” as he toured northwestern Delaware County. Fortunately, a retired minister named Garrett H. Phillips was appointed pastor of the renamed Wheeling Chapel Church six months after Greene’s trip through town12.
The building was revived under Phillips’ stewardship13. As its members set out to refurbish the structure, they found that it contained valuable assets, like a $5,000 pulpit, a thousand-dollar clock, and forty chairs in the attic that Phillips believed were more than a hundred years old14! Unfortunately, the church briefly shut down after Phillips died in 1986, but services were eventually revived by Reverend Jack Reynolds15.
Sadly, Reynolds’ efforts weren’t a rousing success. The church went vacant again until a man named Bill Stamper learned of its impending demolition in the early 1990s. A man of faith, he and several others refurbished the structure with a new floor, new windows, and a new furnace. With Bill Stamper as pastor, the chapel became home to the Wheeling United Baptist Church.
The group discovered that the belfry hadn’t been rebuilt securely after the tornado struck and removed the rotten structure16. Despite that, Wheeling United Baptist Church was still a going concern as late as 2001, when a homecoming service featured the Merry Hearts Southern Gospel Singers17. I haven’t been able to find out exactly when the last service was held, but the building passed into private ownership in 2009 and was sold again earlier this year18.
The long story of the Wheeling Methodist Episcopal Church came to its final chapter this past April. After enduring a tornado, threats of relocation, the prospect of demolition, and the removal of its tower, the resilient Wheeling Methodist Episcopal Church finally succumbed to the relentless passage of time. Despite Dick Greene’s call to preserve it forty years ago, the building was too badly damaged to insure. With “heavy hearts19,” its new owners were forced to remove it.
I’m just an interloper, but I was overcome with memories of the building as I took my old route to take photos of the wreckage. I’m sure the fifty people of Wheeling are really mourning the loss of their old church. When the town was about to be taken over for the park in 1971, residents pointed to the town store, the schoolhouse, the cemetery, and the Methodist Episcopal Church as honest examples of its living history. Now, Wheeling’s down to a schoolhouse and cemetery. With no classes held since 1925 and no interments since 1979, both are essentially abandoned.
I hate to say it, but I think the schoolhouse will be the next part of Wheeling’s history to succumb. Once it goes, the village will be reduced to little more than a crossroads without much to remind us of its heritage. I’m not looking forward to that day, but even as someone who simply drove past it frequently, I’ll never forget either building. I hope others don’t either.
Sources Cited
1 Flook, C. (2019). Lost Towns of Delaware County, Indiana. The History Press [Charleston]. book. p. 120.
2 Roysdon, K. (2005, November 16). Wheeling businesses gone, but family history remains. The Muncie Star Press. p. 4.
3 Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1 (Vol. 1, p. 252). book, Lewis Publishing Company.
4 Wheeling United Methodist Church, Exterior View (2006). Delaware County Methodist Church Photographs Collection. Ball State University Digital Media Repository. Web. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
5 Gaston Is Aroused (1908, February 28). The Muncie Morning Star. p. 14.
6 Careins, R. & Shideler, T. (2024, May 8). Personal communication.
7 Property in and Near Wheeling Damaged by Tornado That Swept Northwest Part of County (1922, April 19). The Muncie Morning Star. p. 1.
8 Love, N. (1971, September 5). Wheeling Happy Just as It Is. The Muncie Star. p. 1.
9 Chapman, S. (1971, July 11). Model of Wheeling Historical Village to Go on Display in County Building. The Muncie Star. p. 2.
10 Greene, D. (1972, July 2). Wheeling Community Chapel exterior. Spurgeon-Greene Photographs Collection. Ball State University Digital Media Repository. Web. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
11 Greene, D. (1980, January 18). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
12 Garrett Phillips Named Wheeling Church Pastor (1980, June 14). The Muncie Star. p. 4.
13 Wheeling Methodist Dedication Sunday (1983, February 26). The Muncie Star. p. 4.
14 Phillips, G.H. (1981, November 3). Town of Wheeling. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
15 Wheeling Congregation to Have Services Again (1986, April 19). The Muncie Star. p. 4.
16 Shores, L. (1993, September 30). Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
17 Church Notes (2001, June 9). The Muncie Star Press. p. 22.
18 (See footnote 6).
19 Careins, D.K. (2024, April 28). “We are the ones that tore it down. The building was unable to be insured due to the amount of [Comment on the post “A PIECE OF LOCAL HISTORY.”]. Facebook.
My stomach tightened as I read this. What is to become of us if our small communities lose all the places that they once pointed to as important pieces of their identity? Thanks for sharing this story.
It is sad that those little country churches have not been able to survive. Rural communities have lost population all over, and even among those who have stayed, a dwindling number seems to have interest in traditional church services.
I read an article a while back that also attributed their decline to improved transportation methods. I can see all of it as relevant.
It alwasy surprises me how small towns can just disappear.
I agree!