In February 1822, Hiram Kidder entered land in what is now Hudson Township, and built the first log house. In just one year, there were seven houses in the frontier settlement along the Bean Creek. Following the custom of that day, the families joined together in holding religious services before churches were established. The first service was held at the home of Alpheus Pratt, two miles north of the village in the area of what is now Beecher Road.

 In May 1835, Beriah H. Lane organized a Sunday School (then called Sabbath School) at his house. At about this time weekly cottage prayer meetings were held from house to house. In November 1835, the Rev. William E. Warner, a lay preacher from Lewiston, N.Y., settled on a farm southeast of Hudson. On the following Sunday, November 15, 1835, he preached at Noah Cressey’s log house, and organized a class of sixteen members with Lorenzo Brown as class leader. This was the first sermon ever preached in Hudson.

Since Rev. Warner was not officially connected with the work in Michigan, under the Methodists in Ohio his tenure was only temporary. The Rev. William Rhodes, living near Rollin, attended a quarterly conference near the Tecumseh Circuit and invited those Methodist preachers to visit the Bean Creek country. The Reverends Washington Jackson and Allen Staples made such a visit in August 1836 and held a two-day meeting in Ames’ barn at Keene’s Corners, two miles north of Hudson. They proceeded down the valley, preaching at Tiffin and Seneca.

In early September 1836, at Mansfield, Ohio, the Michigan Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was created. At that same conference the Bean Creek Mission was formed with Lorenzo Davis as missionary. The mission’s headquarters were, no doubt, in the saddle. The mission field itself extended from Tecumseh on the east, Coldwater on the west, Spring Arbor on the north and the south had no definite boundary, extending into Ohio. It was a rather extensive territory for one man to travel, since all of it was unbroken wilderness with no developed roads.

At this time the Methodist Episcopal Church was still a very young denomination, barely fifty years old when preaching in Hudson began. Born out of the American Revolution, the Methodist were a frontier church that sought to proclaim Jesus Christ in every new settlement with the expansion westward. The circuit riding preachers were charged to seek out the newest settlement whenever they saw smoke from a chimney on the horizon. Upon their arrival a “class meeting “ was organized and a leader appointed from the community to continue the work until the preacher’s return, which may not be for one to three months.

As of 1836 there was no Methodist preacher appointed to serve at Lanesville.  However the traveling preacher of the Tecumseh Circuit did preach at Keene Corners (2 miles north of Hudson) and at the Brown settlement where preaching alternated at the houses of Elisha Brown, Noah Creesey and Michael Dillon; the later being of the Roman Catholic faith and his wife a Methodist.

The first quarterly conference was held on New Year’s Day, 1837, in the Brown settlement.  The presiding elder, the Rev. Henry Colclazer of the Michigan Conference, was unable to attend.  Since the regular minister, Mr. Lorenzo Davis was unordained, the Rev. Mr. Foote, a local elder, preached the morning sermon and administered the sacrament of Holy Communion.  The second quarterly conference was held in the Ames’ barn on July 15^th an 16^th, that same year.  Elisha Brown and his class (a weekly prayer group) traveled to the meeting in a lumber wagon, drawn by oxen and entertained at the home of Alpheus Pratt.  The Reverends John Scotford and Allen Staples succeeded the Rev. Mr. Davis.

The first meeting to organize the Methodists in what is now the City of Hudson, then the village of Lanesville, was in the early winter of 1837.  The meeting was held at Augustus Finney’s home, which was situated on the north side of Main Street about midway between Church and Market streets.  Rev. Scotford was living in a log house on the Ames farm north of town.  On the appointed night the boys proceeded to the house with flaming torches of hickory bark and led the minister through the woods to the meeting place in the village.  There he preached and organized a class, with John H. Carleton as leader.

Our congregation is a direct descendent from these pioneer predecessors who had both the vision and faith do the Lord’s work on the Michigan frontier before it became a state.  Thus were the early beginnings of the Methodist congregation in the settlement on the Bean Creek that would later become Hudson. This followed a pattern that continued through the years and across the miles as settlers pushed westward in a new country that was born out of liberty and proclaimed itself to be “one nation under God.”

          Pastors of Hudson First United Methodist Church 1836-2006

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