Methodist missionaries began their work in the Big Bend area in the early 1820s. These men were sent by the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Board of Missions to meet the spiritual needs of settlers of the Florida territory. Some, operating out to Mississippi, moved into Eastern Alabama and West Florida. Others, utilizing South Carolina as a base, traversed the Georgia, East Florida, and Middle Florida backwoods.

Florida Methodism had its beginnings in Amelia Island (1822), Pensacola (1822), and St. Augustine (1823). These societies, as they were then called, were small and grew slowly throughout the territorial years. It was the growth of Methodism in Middle Florida, the area between the Apalachicola and Suwannee Rivers, that provided the impetus for the creation of the Tallahassee District in 1825 and later the Florida Conference in 1845.

Everywhere the missionaries went they attempted to organize Methodist societies. The closest to the new Tallahassee area were the societies of the Chattahoochee Mission, started by the South Carolina Conference meeting at Savannah in February 1823. The Conference sent two of its ablest circuit riders, John J. Triggs and John Slade, to serve the tri-state area. Their financial support was provided by the national and conference boards of mission as well as the Savannah Young Men’s Society.

Triggs and Slade did their work well in spite of such difficulties as a disease that blinded their horses. They reported to the next year’s conference 292 white and 64 Negro members. Characteristically, when the first wagonload of seven settlers arrived in Tallahassee on April 9, 1824, the circuit riders were not far behind. (Pensacola Gazette, Sept. 24, 1825)

 Meanwhile, at a meeting in Charleston in February 1824, the Conference Board of Missions had sent James Tabor and Isaac Sewell to replace Triggs and Slade. Tabor and Sewell witnessed the agonizingly slow growth of the infant capital during the first year. Their presence is unrecorded, but they probably were among the 10 persons who met in the home of Mr. Myers on the last Sunday in September 1824 to organize the first Methodist society (now Trinity United Methodist Church) in Tallahassee. One hundred years later, minutes of the Quarterly Conference of Nov. 28, 1824, referred to the celebration of the anniversary of the organization of Trinity Church. These minutes stated that of those present at the organizational meeting, six were white and four were black. Mr. Myers was an early settler and the father of Mary Myers, Tallahassee’s first May Queen, who later married E.L.T. Blake, a pastor of Trinity Church.

When Tabor and Sewell departed for the Annual Conference at Fayetteville, North Carolina, in January 1825, there were only six houses in the city. Yet during their labors in the area, they had helped to form the initial Methodist society in Tallahassee.

The Conference took a decisive step in 1825 and created the new Tallahassee District. Josiah Evans was appointed to serve both as presiding elder of the district and as pastor of the Tallahassee Mission. The mission included the present Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and Madison counties. During his initial year, Tallahassee experienced a minor population explosion, growing from six houses to more than fifty. The construction included a Methodist church. (Pensacola Gazette, Sept. 24, 1825)

Not only had Josiah Evans traveled throughout the Tallahassee Mission organizing societies, but he had helped raise subscriptions to build the first church in Tallahassee. It was erected at the corner of Bronough and what is now Park Avenue. Colin Woodbury, Methodist local preacher, built the structure, fulfilling the spirit of the Methodist Discipline regarding church construction: