Celebrating 200 years of Methodism in Mount Kisco

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. - Methodism in Mount Kisco is older than Mount Kisco itself.

The United Methodist Church has a history going back 200 years while the village is getting set to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its incorporation this year.

This important milestone was marked last month with a presentation, proclamations, speeches, prayer, fellowship, and, of course, food, at the church’s latest iteration, a Gothic Revival edifice located at the corner of Main Street and Smith Avenue, aka “Pumpkin Way.” (The church is locally famous for its annual pumpkin sale.)

The tiny acorn of faith that was to grow into a mighty oak was planted in 1793 in New Castle with the spread of Methodism during the Evangelical Protestantism era.

In the mid-1700s, followers of John Wesley, an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a principal leader of a revival movement within the Church of England, were beginning to be deployed as missionaries around various communities.

Wesley, along with his brother Charles, founded the Methodist Church in 1738.

These nomadic preachers continued their work before and after the American Revolution.

Lacking a building, local faithful gathered in each other’s homes to pray and study.

On Dec. 16, 1824, a meeting was held at the home of Tyler Fountain to incorporate the New Castle Methodist Episcopal Church, as the UMC was then known. (The house was located approximately where Bareburger restaurant is now.)

Fountain and four other leading lights of the community, including Caleb Kirby, were elected trustees.

The following year, Kirby and his wife, Mary, bequeathed a quarter of an acre of land for a church.

At the time the area was known as Kirbyville. It had been called New Castle Corners and Kisco Depot as well, after the railroad arrived in 1847.

In 1875, Mount Kisco was incorporated as a village. It emerged from the towns of Bedford and New Castle as a coterminous and independent village/town on Jan. 1, 1978.

Adjacent to the Episcopal Cemetery, the first church building was about the size of – and looked like – an ordinary schoolhouse.

The congregation soon outgrew the space and in 1843, a new church with Sunday School rooms and a gallery was built on the same property just yards away, on the spot where T.J. Maxx is now located.

The first church building became the minister’s residence.

When the second church became too small, the Methodists built the present structure. It was dedicated on Aug. 20, 1868.

While Mayor J. Michael Cindrich, in proclaiming Dec. 16, 2024, United Methodist Church Day in Mount Kisco, emphasized that it was the people, and NOT the Carpenter Gothic-style building itself that was being celebrated, architecture fans may note that the third and present house of worship was designed by Gamaliel King, a major figure in Brooklyn civic and ecclesiastical architecture, and built by church member and contractor Edward Dauchey.
Carpenters who worked on the project got paid $4 a day.

The Mount Kisco UMC’s current pastor, the Rev. Bette Johnson Sohm, was asked to say the invocation at the Village Board’s Dec. 16 meeting where she was presented with a proclamation.

The Victorian-style parsonage, now used by the church as a thrift shop, was built in 1871 by George Marshall.

In the 1880s, the attic was transformed into bedrooms and in 1898, a bedroom, bath, and kitchen were added at the parsonage’s rear. It also got heating, plumbing, and an electrical upgrade.

Halstead Memorial Hall was added in 1938, thanks to parishioner Emma Osborne, who dedicated it to her parents.

The one-story extension included a stage, social hall, and kitchen. The space is, or was, used for Boy Scout meetings, day care, and other community-oriented programs, such as the Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry.

The pantry serves folks in 21 northern Westchester communities. It’s open two days a week, and feeds more than 700 households.

Also according to westchestermagazine.com, the pantry was used by more than 110,000 people in 2024, of whom 28,800 were children and more than 12,000, seniors.

It delivers food to homebound folks.

Many organizations, businesses, and programs support the effort. These include, westchestermagazine.com reported: Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, the Westchester Library System, Sustainable Westchester, Stop & Shop in Mount Kisco, Trader Joe’s in Yorktown, several DeCicco’s, and two supplemental nutrition programs, SNAP and WIC.

An Education Wing was added in 1958 during the Baby Boomer era. It had classrooms, a choir room, a pastor’s study, and a church office. 

Unfortunately, during the late 1970s, water damage followed by an invasion of carpenter ants, which build nests in dead, damp wood, forced the church to replace its original steeple.

The project took place from 1978 to 1980 with help from the community.

Both the church and the parsonage made it onto the National Register of Historic Places on Nov. 4, 1982.

Celebration 

On Sunday, Dec. 15, Pastor Sohm introduced the first speaker, congregant W. Ross Porter, son of the late Rev. Willett R. Porter Jr., who had served the Mount Kisco UMC from 1973 to 1989. (Porter’s mom, Shirley, was the keynote speaker.)

When a high school student, Sohm had lived with the then-pastor’s family for two years so she was “delighted” to learn that she was returning to the community as pastor in 2022. 

Sohm was also called that year to lead the Asbury UMC in Croton-on-Hudson. She presides over two services on Sundays.

She and her husband, Glenn, have been married for 38 years.

According to Ross Porter, 1824 was only 48 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Lewis and Clark expedition to the North American West had happened 18 years before. John Quincy Adams had just become the nation’s sixth president. And Abraham Lincoln was 15 years old.

About 28,000 souls lived in Westchester at the time. Although that sounds like a lot, it pales in comparison to the current population of 989,898.

(The 1885 Census found there were 200 people living in Mount Kisco.)

“There was no electricity. That came 55 years later. And Mount Kisco did not exist in 1824,” he said.

At the time, the closest Methodist church was in Armonk.

Now it’s probably a 10-minute drive, but back in the horse and buggy days, it was quite a trek.

A Human Face 

History is more than mere facts and figures; it’s also about real people with real stories.

Because of her extensive research and passion about the subject, Shirley Porter was able to dish up some fascinating facts about the originators of Methodism.

(“Methodist” originally was a derogatory term, used by outsiders to make fun of John Wesley and his early societies and their dedication to following a “method” for getting closer to God. Followers later owned it as a positive descriptor of their religion.)

John Wesley was born in 1703 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England to Samuel and Susanna Wesley, both Tories. His parents had 19 children, but only 10 survived beyond infancy.

Charles was born in 1707. He was born prematurely and his parents wrapped him up in cotton wool to keep him warm and alive. Although sickly the rest of his life, he married, had children, and survived to the ripe old age of 81. He grew up to be a prolific writer of hymns, more than 6,000 of them. “Some were good; some were bad,” Shirley Porter said.

He wrote the words to “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

Charles’ and John’s mother had more freedom than many other preacher’s wives of her time. She preferred to talk with the men – who respected her and listened to what she had to say -- rather than “gossip” with the women.
However, things weren’t always rosy at home.

Samuel, upset that Susanna wasn’t saying “amen” after prayers for the reigning monarch of the time, left town for about a year.

John was a product of their reunion, Shirley Porter said.

When the boy was six, he almost perished in a fire in the rectory.

Because of their thatched roofs, houses tended to go up like kindling.

Trapped in his room by the flames, John went to the window where neighbors saw him and formed a human ladder to rescue the terrified child.

Later, he referred to himself as a “brand from the burning,” a way of expressing his personal belief that he had been saved by God because he was destined for a special purpose in life.

John and Charles were banned from preaching in the Anglican Church for a number of reasons, including their penchant for preaching in unorthodox places such as fields and churchyards --“wherever the people were,” Shirley Porter said.

Charles’ wife, Sarah, would go with him occasionally, riding on the back of his horse.

She was a talented soloist and if a church refused to let Charles preach, she wouldn’t sing there either, Shirley Porter said.

The brothers were considered so radical that once John was mobbed and nearly killed. (There were allegedly Anglican ministers among the thugs.)

It wasn’t unusual either for the Wesley household to be pelted with eggs and stones either, Shirley Porter said.

The list of speakers was long.

Cindrich, who pointed out that in 1817, the area was infamously “known for drunkenness, gambling, horse racing, cock fighting, shooting matches, and who knows what else.”

Although theirs’ wasn’t the first church, the Methodists may have helped change all that.

“I’m just going by the assumption that in the next seven years, the winds of the Holy Ghost started coming through Mount Kisco and what the Holy Ghost brought to the village was charity, joy, happiness, and all the attributes of good people,” he said, congratulating the UMC on its congregation’s “significant achievement and dedication to the betterment of this community.”

County Legislator Erika Pierce of Katonah noted that good works are “clearly part of the history and DNA of the church.” (The anniversary made it onto the County Center’s Jumbotron in White Plains.)

Ralph Vigliotti, president of the Mount Kisco Historical Society, credited many of the early Methodists with being the leaders who had brought the village to where it is today.

He mentioned David Fletcher Gorham, a member of the church and a stalwart of the temperance movement, who in 1907 had gifted the village its first piece of public art – a granite and concrete water fountain atop which perched the figure of a Native American.

It became known as “Chief Kisco,” although there never was a real person known by that name.

His beliefs are etched on the inscription on the base, “God’s only beverage for man or beast.”

The UMC’s archival collection is one of the finest in the village, Vigliotti said, adding that there were things it had that the historical society didn’t.

“But we do now,” he joshed.

Noting that events such as the church’s anniversary celebration is the type of thing that gets people “involved in their own history,” Vigliotti said it ensures that “the next generation and the next will know where we’ve come from.”

The Rev. Parker Prout, pastor from 2015 to 2018, said he hadn’t seen many milestones as “meaningful” as the church’s 200th anniversary.

He was a brand-new (and then still unlicensed) pastor when he arrived at the Mount Kisco UMC.

“The congregation gave me a loving embrace, a lot of patience … yanked my chain a little bit … and helped me learn my craft as a young pastor, or at least one who was light on experience,” Prout said, adding that even though he’s moved on to other assignments, the congregation “is extremely special and dear” to his heart.

The Rev. Bill Pfohl, who served the Mount Kisco UMC from 1993 to 1999, recalled being present during the church’s 175th anniversary.

Looking around at the stained-glass windows, to which the names of the donors were attached, he recognized that although prominent citizens of the day, details of their lives have now been lost to time.

But that doesn’t really matter, Pfohl said.

What’s more impressive is the sheer number of people who “have been part of this fellowship over the course of 200 years, whose names or stories we don’t know. But they’re known to God and God has worked in and through them. The blessings and the impact on this community and so much further is an inspiration,” he said, adding: “It draws me into a sense of awe.”

Pfohl said he felt “blessed” to be part of the UMC’s story and was grateful to Sohm “for the journey we have shared.”

The Rev. Nicole Schwalbe, who hails from Minnesota and is pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, located just up Main Street from the UMC, stressed the importance of different faith and civic organizations banding together on projects such as the food pantry and the emergency shelter partnership.

“It’s been such a joy and honor to do work with this church,” she said. “I think that, in these days and times especially, none of us can be in silos.”

Pastor Timothy Wagner of the Croton Falls Community Church, a community composed of, it says, “all major Christian Faith traditions,” was raised Lutheran but was part of the UMC’s youth fellowship, which the church had opened to all members of the community.

He remembers riding his bike from his home in Bedford to Mount Kisco for a while until his parents got worried for his safety and began giving him a ride. They would drop him off and then continue on their way to the Lutheran church up the street.

Saying he was a pastor because of the UMC, a grateful Wagner thanked it “for having the courage to be a welcoming congregation and for being the open church that you are.”

Rabbi Aaron Brusso was there to represent Temple Bet Torah, which is marking its 75th anniversary this year. The synagogue is about 100 yards away on Smith Avenue.

“When I got your invitation, I thought ‘OK, we really are the new kid on the block’,” he said, adding that it was “an honor” to be able to celebrate such important milestones with the UMC.

Referencing the biblical reading about the relationship between twins Jacob and Esau, who’d had a rocky start, Brusso explained that each brother had believed that “the way to get to a better place was by using each other, as opposed to appreciating each other.”

After 21 years in exile, Jacob returns and, after being accepted by Esau, tells him that seeing his face was like “seeing the face of God.”

To Brusso, this means that “in order to get somewhere higher, to connect with God, we cannot circumvent people, we cannot use people, we have to see and appreciate people.”

He was thankful that the UMC and Bet Torah get to do that “sacred work together” through their partnership on the food pantry, which fulfills the needs, and recognizes the “full humanity,” of the folks who use it.

“It’s an honor and a pleasure to work with you. May we continue to do so for many years to come,” Brusso said.