Lesters Chapel United Methodist Church

Lesters Chapel United Methodist Church. Shelby County. , Around 1818, itinerant Methodist circuit riders traveled through the Mississippi Territory and organized church services. In 1837, Alfred Musgrove Lester and his wife, Mary Ann Poindexter Lester, left South Carolina and settled in Shelby County on land recently ceded to the United States by the Creek and Choctaw Indians. The Lesters and others erected their first log church in 1837 and called it Lesters Chapel Methodist Church. Sometime later, church members built a clapboard building, which stood for decades. In 1950, the church built the current building, which is the fourth one built by the church. This sanctuary contains the original pine floorboards, and some of the pews used in the clapboard building are still in use in the annexes. The church added a Sunday School annex in 1962, remodeled the interior of the sanctuary in 1987, and added a new kitchen and gymnasium in 2004. The site of the church is historic in other ways; Civil War soldiers were mustered, and survivors were discharged at nearby Yellow Leaf Creek. Many fine preachers have served Lesters Chapel, including Alfred Musgrove Lester's son, Samuel P. Lester, for whom Lester Memorial Church in Oneonta, Alabama is named., Listed in the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on December 10, 2010..