First United Methodist Church -805 Canal Street

The sanctuary you see now at First United Methodist Church was dedicated on Easter Sunday in 1899. The three large, stained glass windows cost $450. The Methodist Episcopal Church – South, as it was then known, raised a sanctuary as early as 1835 and was the earliest congregation in Decatur. That first building was a one-room brick structure. A later house of worship was burned by Union soldiers during the Civil War; the federal government later reimbursed the congregation for the damage. In 1886 the Reverend John Harmon Nichols – a crippled veteran of the Confederate 16th Tennessee Volunteers – arrived and determined to build a church in Decatur. He kept that vow and built a “neat little church” that cost $2,200. That structure immediately predated the sanctuary that stands before you now.