Elwood Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Way out in Madison County, there's a church with roots that go all the way back to the 1840s, when the community of Elwood went by a different name entirely. They called it French back then.

Different name, same land, and the same kind of people who needed a place to gather. What they had at first was a log cabin, built by a man named James Blair Durham. No grand sanctuary, no steeple catching the morning light.

Just hewn timber and the will to show up. That was the beginning of Elwood Methodist Church. Services moved later to a frame building near the cemetery, which tells you something right there about how close together life and death sat in those early years.

And then, at the turn of the century, the present sanctuary was completed. The congregation had come a long way from that first log cabin. Now, the cemetery is still there.

And nearby, there is one lone grave, the grave of a young girl. The marker doesn't give her name. It only says she was young, and that the cemetery and that solitary grave are reminders of the area's early settlers, many of whom were members of this very church.

That detail has a way of settling over you quiet, like dust after a long road. Through its leadership, the Elwood Methodist Church grew into a focal point for the surrounding rural area. Started in a log cabin somebody built by hand, and became the kind of place a whole community organized itself around.

That's not nothing. That's just about everything.

What the marker says

Begun in the 1840s, when the community of Elwood was known as French, this church first met in a log cabin built by James Blair Durham. Services were later held in a frame building near the cemetery before the present sanctuary was completed at the turn of the century. The cemetery and the nearby lone grave of a young girl are reminders of the area's early settlers, many of whom were members here. Through its leadership, the Elwood Methodist Church developed as a focal point for the surrounding rural area. (1983)