PORT TOWNSEND — Members of Trinity United Methodist Church will put down their paintbrushes, shovels and hammers to celebrate the congregation’s 150th birthday Sunday in a building they have literally saved from collapse.
“It’s been quite a year, but it’s been fun,” said the Rev. Wendell Ankeny, Trinity’s pastor.
Founded in 1853, Trinity is the oldest continuing congregation on the North Olympic Peninsula and one of the five oldest Methodist congregations in the state.
Named by one of the founders, a doctor who went to a Trinity church in his hometown of Philadelphia, the church dates from the arrival of the first minister from Whidbey Island the year after Port Townsend was founded.
In 1871, the congregation decided to buy a lot at the corner of Clay and Taylor streets and built a wood-frame church for $1,400.
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The rest of the story appears in the Friday/Saturday Peninsula Daily News.