Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Chapel
- The front doors of the Chapel are the original doors installed when the church was built. In 1902, the Bell Tower was constructed, and the doors moved to the entrance where they are now.
- When the Chapel was being restored by Bill Porterfield and Andy Little, the two windows on each end were discovered. They had been covered early on.
- After the Barn Sanctuary was built, the Chapel was renovated to return it to its original form. While taking down the “front” wall to renovate the Chapel, a huge active beehive was discovered behind the wall on the second window by the current piano. The hive started out in the southeast corner of the window and flared down below the middle of the window and covered almost half the window. A beekeeper was called in to clean it up, and it was a whole day operation.
- While taking up old carpet, there was another discovery — a chunk of wooden floor was missing by the “new” partition, under the fourth pew/bench.
- Additionally, if you get down on your hands and knees you can see marks from the feet of the old wood burning stove that had been used to heat the church. If that stove had been left there much longer, in all likelihood, it would have burned through the floor into the “dirt room” below and caused the Chapel to be destroyed.
- In the summers when we didn’t have air conditioning, we just raised the windows on each side of the addition and ran the blowers on the furnace. During a summer wedding, we moved in a large stage fan, which someone had donated and was used on occasion in the Shelter House. It was placed in the corner at the end of the aisle and set on low, As the bride made the turn to start down the aisle, the fan promptly grabbed hold of her veil and sucked it into the fan! While someone was frantically trying to get it out of the fan, her head is being pulled back, the fan is making a chugging noise. The sound technician at the time, Mark Brown, unplugged the fan. He saved the day – but not the veil!
