Island Grove United Methodist Church, 2025 (SCHS)
Island Grove United Methodist Church, located on Old Jacksonville Road two miles west of Berlin, was founded as a church by the Island Grove Society in 1822.
In its earliest days, the congregation was serviced by circuit-riding preachers. According to pioneer preacher Rev. Peter Cartwright, this “Sangamo Circuit,” the first in Sangamon County, was established by Rev. James Sims around 1820.
By 1849, the congregation had gathered enough members to support a full-time pastor. Initially, church members worshiped in members’ homes, and then in a log building.
The present church building, made of bricks from a brickyard in the nearby town of Virginia, was constructed in 1862. In its earlier days, the church property included several outbuildings, among them stables, a buggy shed, a hitching rack, and a parsonage for the minister.
Those have since been demolished, and now the church stands alone, surrounded by Woodwreath Cemetery, founded in 1872. James N. Brown, considered the founder of the Illinois State Fair, donated the land for the cemetery; he and many of his descendants are among the nearly 2,000 people buried there.
The church was fully renovated in 1955 under its pastor at the time, Dr. McKendree Blair (1899-1995). Blair, chaplain and instructor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, was Island Grove Methodist’s longest-serving pastor.
In the renovation, nearly all of the original furniture and pews were replaced, the antiquated heating system was updated to a gas furnace, and Sunday school rooms were added. According to Island Grove United Methodist Church, New Berlin, Illinois, a history written by Genelle McCullough in 1997, the only surviving items from the original church are two of the altar chairs and the baptismal fountain.
As part of the church’s centennial celebration in 1923, its original record book was placed into a concrete block in the corner of the sanctuary. By the mid-1940s, the purpose of the block was forgotten. When it was broken open, however, the record book was found and retrieved. Since then, the book has been stored safely in a bank vault.
“Far from fading, as many country churches have done since the advent of the automobile and good roads,” the Illinois State Register said in 1959, “the Island Grove Church is one of the most active for its size in Central Illinois.”
The church celebrated its 200th anniversary in August 2022.
A historical marker on the church grounds notes that about 850 members of the Potawatomi Native American tribe camped nearby in the fall of 1838 while being forced to relocate from Indiana to Kansas. A child died at the Island Grove campsite, one of about 40 Potawatomi who died during the trek.
However, the marker has been relocated. It originally sat at the entrance to a farm on the north side of Old Jacksonville Road across from the church property. So the marker’s statement that the child “is buried near this spot” is somewhat misleading.
Contributor: Caroline Kionka. Kionka is a librarian with the Sangamon Valley Collection, the local history collection, at Lincoln Library, Springfield’s municipal library.
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