In Rochester, we are lucky to have churches built over 100 years ago. Two of these still have active congregations and one, the East Rochester Congregational Church, is a museum preserving much of Rochester’s history. However, another one of the town’s churches was not as lucky. Located at the triangle formed by Walnut Plain and Alley Roads, the Union Meeting house, a Methodist church, occupied this spot beginning in 1824. According to L.C. Humphrey’s papers, church members came from some of Rochester’s oldest families – the Clapps, Shermans, and Mendalls among them.
The original church building stood until 1899 when it was destroyed by a devastating fire. In a newspaper article, Humphrey told the story of that tragedy. One day as he was driving his team of horses down Marion Road to pick up freight at the Marion station, he smelled smoke and saw a stream of it rising from the direction of the church. Pulling into the yard of Smellie’s blacksmith shop, he unhitched a horse and rode to the Union Meeting House. On arrival, he found the church ablaze. The intensity of the fire had been increased when cords of wood stored nearby also caught on fire.
There was nothing that could be done but to let the fire burn itself out, completely leveling the building. While the cause of the fire was never pinpointed, it was commonly believed that vagrants who had been sitting on a bench at the back of the church had discarded a cigarette that was not completely extinguished. It caught the grass on fire and the fire spread to the building.
Almost immediately after the conflagration, parishioners and neighbors worked to clear away the debris, and, by 1900, a new church building was almost complete. Additional money needed to be raised before the platform and benches could be added. To raise the needed funds, church members held a fair with food stalls, exhibits, and entertainment. The fair was a huge success and work on the church was completed.
For some time, the Union Meeting House had an active congregation, but as older members died and younger ones moved away, the congregation dwindled and with too few members to sustain the church, services ended; the building was abandoned. This continued for many years until the trustees, who still retained ownership, sold it to Thomas Gayorski. He used it for storage of items from his poultry farm and building contractor business.
The old church building suffered as the years passed. Vandals broke windows and doors and stole items stored inside. In 1960, 61 years after the original fire, a suspicious blaze leveled the old building and destroyed a site rich in Rochester history.
By Connie Eshbach