History

November 2021by Anna Louise Bates, PhD, Church Historian In 2020, I published a story in the church newsletter about blackface minstrel shows performed by members of our church during the 1950s.  The article was based upon primary documents; in this case, programs from the 1951 and 52 shows.  The programs evidenced deep racial insensitivity among […]

September 2021by Anna Louise Bates, PhD, Church Historian In 1960, the New Paltz Methodist Church had occupied its new church building for more than thirty years. During that time, the congregation had grown from 370 members in 1932 to 413 in 1960. Besides Sunday services, the church featured multiple Sunday School classes for all ages

May 2021by Anna Louise Bates, PhD, Church Historian The New Paltz United Methodist Church building on Main Street is a well-known landmark in New Paltz. This is the first in a series of articles about the history of New Paltz Methodists’ current location. Prior to this building’s opening in 1929, the church occupied a building

February 2021by Anna Louise Bates, PhD, Church Historian At a time when racial tensions run high in our communities, Christians are called to a heightened level of sensitivity to images in popular culture. Racially charged television shows, comic performances and commercials, though popular as recently as the 1990s, now come under intense scrutiny and appear

“The world would come to an end…” by Anna Louise Bates, PhD, Church HistorianAugust 2020 How and why did the first Methodist preachers come to New Paltz?  The Rev. Elijah Woolsey, a Methodist circuit rider who preached in New Paltz in 1801, kept a journal and wrote a memoir about his life.  His memoir describes

By Anna Louise Bates, Church Historian November 2020 Four years ago, Laura Gust and Brianna Switzer,  two senior history students from Empire State College, completed an internship that involved sorting boxes of historical documents at New Paltz United Methodist Church.  In that process, they came across a faded, brittle newspaper that required special care to unfold without destroying.  Thankfully, they worked